Welcome And What To Expect

Chris Norton 0:00

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes with me, Chris Norton. This is the show that teaches you growth through failure. And this week we've got a brilliant guest, Niall Ratcliffe, CEO and co-founder of Noticed. At just 25, he's got 60,000 followers on LinkedIn, and he uses the platform to build growth for brands. And this isn't your normal LinkedIn improve your profile chat. This is proper, getting um technical and interesting. So yeah, grab yourself a coffee, sit down and take this on board because Niall has got some cracking tips for you. Enjoy.

From Football To Agency Founder

Chris Norton 0:43

Niall Ratcliffe, welcome to the show.

Niall Ratcliffe 0:44

I'm super excited to do this, guys.

Chris Norton 0:46

Thanks for doing it. Um I can't believe this. You're 25 years old, you run an agency in Manchester, 17 people. So where where did that come from? How did you get started? Because that's quite impressive to be doing that at such a young age. When when did you start it and how did that come about?

Niall Ratcliffe 1:01

Yeah , so um my background was actually in football , so I played football to a high level . Uh I got a scholarship at Stockport County . And when I was there , I had a few um like football accessory brands send me a products and they were like , Can you just create a little video for them ? And it was like it was I don't want to swear the first five minutes , but they're like crappy little products , and you'd like put it over your laces , like lace brace and little things like that , like shin pads . Um I posted a few on their social media and they were like , This is performing really well , can you do more ? And I was at the stage where I was 17 , 18 , and I I kind of knew deep down I wasn't gonna make it . I wasn't great enough technically , I wasn't a crazy athlete . Um and I was like , well , this is interesting , this marketing thing on the side . Um so I started to explore it . I went to University in America straight after on a scholarship , played football out there , um , and it was there that I got deeper and deep into marketing . As I was studying it , I was still doing little bits on the side of social media . And at 19 years old , I got a really interesting opportunity to come work at a startup in London . Uh and I say it's interesting because it was a personal branding agency . And at the time , personal branding wasn't a thing . So this small little agency , I was in play number three there , and we were working with like famous podcasters in London , professional footballers , um , billion dollar CEOs , like really high-level people . And because it was such a small agency , I was one-to-one managing these accounts . So we were doing it via WhatsApp , and I got to know these people personally . And it was while I was there I saw the amount of money being made on LinkedIn in particular . So I had this one coaching client , um , and I was watching him do like uh 10 grand a month deals in his LinkedIn DMs , and I was like , everyone's talking about TikTok and YouTube . And I was like , but this guy's making money on LinkedIn . I thought it was like a job site . And then we had another client who had a music startup app . It was like a music dating app where you could put a playlist up and it matched your playlist with like girls or the other way around . Okay . Because you had similar music interests . He raised 10 million quid . And I was watching him do check sizes in his LinkedIn DMs . So he was like , an investor would message him , we're posting content for him , and he would say , Oh , what check size are you writing ? They'd come back to him , he'd send the deck . And I was in his LinkedIn account watching it happen . And by the way , I had no money at the time . What check size is your shit ? Yeah , like you're gonna invest 250 grand , or like what check size are you willing to write for the investment ?

Chris Norton 3:00

So invest in the business. In the business.

Niall Ratcliffe 3:01

Straight on LinkedIn. In his LinkedIn DMs. And um, I was like, why is everyone talking about TikTok and YouTube when it seems like the money's being made on LinkedIn? Yeah. More and more at this agency, we just saw clients coming in and asking for LinkedIn and doing more LinkedIn. Uh, and soon after, someone offered me my full-time salary just to run their LinkedIn. Um, so as any good brother would, I I called my older brother and I said, I think someone's kind of just offered me, it was probably like 35 grand to run their LinkedIn at the time. I was like, I think there could be a business here. Um so I started posting LinkedIn myself. I decided to put a post up because I have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I'm starting a business. Um, someone's asked me to run their LinkedIn and I'm open to taking more people on. Uh 11 days later, we'd hit a sixth of a run rate. Um, and it was just a bit of luck, a bit of experience, but also um for me it felt like the perfect example of like we came to market and satisfy a demand that we no one knew was there, and we didn't either at the time.

Chris Norton 3:53

Basically , we've had we've had five or six people on who are like LinkedIn specialists , and yeah , I'd say you're the youngest one of the lot . Um , and I've been on LinkedIn since well , I used to teach a um uh teach how to you're right , it was a job site , how to set your personal branding on LinkedIn . But what I'm finding interesting there is you're saying that he was actually doing deals . That's the difference . So we when we've talked to other people , they're like , okay , you can use um personalised messages on LinkedIn to get business , right ? Now , before anyone fucking messages me on LinkedIn , I'm telling you now , stop sending those automated DMs , they're awful . Um , it's and and the and I know this is what you is going to be part of your programme . Yeah because so we've had people arguing there's been a case for four personalised messages on LinkedIn and automated personalised messages on LinkedIn . Will and I have tried it . I'm gonna this is a show about embracing marketing mistakes . We tried it , we tried it for a couple of months . Andy and my good friend Andy over there in the corner , who is our Jamie from the Joe Rogan podcast . Uh , he he also got a couple of really positive messages , didn't you , from your automated DM program ? How did that go ?

Niall Ratcliffe 5:05

I don't have a microphone.

Chris Norton 5:06

He doesn't have a microphone. So anyway, I can tell you that he he said I don't want to be involved in this anymore.

Will Ockenden 5:11

I feel like you're selling your soul a little bit with the information.

Chris Norton 5:13

You feel like you you're selling out because it's like it can be slightly personalised , but the the messages are like they're a little bit too generic , even though and I I I can give you like there's probably a system that I can tell you it's like hi Chris . I see that you run an agency of over 20 people in Leeds , and you've currently won 45 PR awards in the last eight years . We we also help founders of businesses that have got and it's like for fuck's sake , it's another personalised um automated DM . So my my question's this is that what you're talking about , or is this different to that ?

Why LinkedIn Reach Collapsed

Niall Ratcliffe 5:50

It's a good question . So when we started , I have to give the context of where we were , right ? So we started 2020 , 2021 , and content was our backbone . Um so we quickly grew , I grew to 60 , 000 followers on the platform . We have 100 , 000 across uh me , my co-founder , and the company page . Um , and we were making clients' money just by posting content at first . So we'd literally go into a business , we'd take on uh the CEO , the key leadership team , so like Chief Revenue Officer , head of sales , head of marketing , um we'd run their content and and deals would come in uh literally just organically .

Chris Norton 6:20

Run their content. When you say run their content, are you talking about their individual personal content? Individual personal pages.

Will Ockenden 6:26

So what's your kind of um framework or approach then? So let's say I'm a CFO, reasonably successful company, you come in, how do you approach that? How do you create content that's compelling and ultimately isn't just interesting, converts?

Niall Ratcliffe 6:40

Well , let me talk . I'm talking about the past for now , and I want to get onto this . Go for it . Because um , I think that now a lot of people what they're selling for LinkedIn content is a complete lie . Um these people with 200 , 000 , 300 , 000 followers on LinkedIn that'll tell you you guys just need to post content , be flooded with leads . Like that is a lie , the platform's very much changed . Um so when we first came in , all you had to do was just produce content . So for you guys , if I just took on your pages and I just talked about what you were doing on a day-to-day basis , uh , a little bit about what you do , like um there was a massive supply and demand equation on LinkedIn . So we all get supply and demand , right ? Business is literally there is a supply of people , sorry , is demand for it , and there's only a certain amount of businesses , and essentially that is is how any marketplace works . Yeah . On LinkedIn , the stat that everyone threw around was about 1 % uh of active users actually posted . So I think there's about 385 million active users . Um so imagine they've got feeds that are blank , LinkedIn has to fill their feeds , but only 1 % of people are actually posting . So let's say I put a post out , LinkedIn needs to fill all of these feeds , and only 1 % posting . So they have to put my post to more people . So I had two , three thousand followers , I was getting 20 to 30 , 000 impressions per post . So it's a massive leverage I had there . I get in front of a lot of people . But what happened after that was 2022 , I think it was , ChatGPT launched , AI blew up , everyone can start posting content . The percentage went from 1 % posting to about 5 % posting , which sounds like a small jump , 4 % . It was actually hundreds of millions of people more posting every day . So the supply and demand equation changed . Um they did a study last year and we said if you have 10 , 000 followers on LinkedIn , the average impressions you'll get on a post is 734 . So if you've gained 10 , 000 followers , you now get your post scene to less than 10 % of that audience , which is the opposite of the supply and demand equation . And the reason is the active users hasn't massively increased , it has increased . LinkedIn's obviously always growing , but it's not increasing at the rate that the posters are growing . Supply and demand equation's changed , and now essentially they don't need to put your feed on content . So back in the day , it was just a case of post on LinkedIn , there's an opportunity there , but now the gap is completely different . Um , my argument at the minute is yes , the opportunity there was for increased reach , but if you saw your LinkedIn strategy as an opportunity for reach , you fundamentally misunderstood the platform . So let's say we go to TikTok or YouTube . These platforms are built for high reach . So if I post a YouTube video , their aim is to get the best content out there and you can explore to hundreds of thousands of views , TikTok , millions of views . But LinkedIn , the value of LinkedIn has always been the high quality audience there . There's like a hundred million decision makers . The average salary on LinkedIn is £ 75 , 000 a year . There's a lot of decision makers there . The value of LinkedIn was always the audience . So while a lot of people think um the value behind it is actually that you could get in front of 20 , 000 people per post , the real value was in that 20 , 000 people , there was a massive high value audience . Um there's a funnel misunderstanding of the platform . Um there's another factor of it as well that I love is connection requests . I always say that if YouTube had a connection request feature where I could send to my target audience and say , come and join my audience , they could accept it . People would pay thousands a month for it . On LinkedIn , every month , I can just add people I want to see my content into my network . And if they accept they see my content .

Chris Norton 9:43

Yeah

Spam DMs And AI Sludge

Chris Norton 9:44

, I've got right , I've got another thing because I I get I'm I've I'm getting old and I feel like the I've getting the I'm looking at my LinkedIn and it's just full of , it used to be full of recruiters , right ? And now and now it's full of people that sell AI services . And it's just like I am now , and I'll actively say I I used to be like you , so I'd be like , oh , connect to loads of people , um , I want to build my network , I want to the positive side of social media , that's why I love social media . It was the good side of it . But the stuff that you talk about there , the the early days , the growing it , the content . Whereas now , as soon as I get like yesterday , even while I my first day back is today from I've been away for a few days in Majorca , right ? Yep , I get back and there's like 12 connection requests . Now , how I'm judging that now is I open them now and I'm looking at the I'm looking at the person and I'm like Dave Simpson , and it's like VP for sales at SaaS Tech AI Trans and then AI Multech Like insert generic Indian names from people in various countries trying to sell us uh AI fan . I'm not saying it's nothing on any particular country . I'm just saying that people just seem to , it seems to be now that people that I don't know if it's just me , I'll ask you as well , Will , and yourself . Are people just connecting you to spam the shit out of you ? Because that I that's how I feel now . I've and going back to the example that Andy didn't give earlier , is you know , he would his profile was uh connecting to people and saying , hi , we do a great podcast or do a great video , would you um we'd love to do work on you , you know , that sort of thing . Yeah , that's what everybody is doing now . Like everybody is connecting with these spammy messages , and I and I'm finding it , I'm finding the content on on LinkedIn annoying because there's several people I know now , and every time I see a post from them , it's all AI . I can tell it looks exact every post looks the same , me included . Uh no , not jokes . Uh some some but everybody uses AI in some way , but some people are not even using their own content or voice .

Will Ockenden 11:49

And it's some people that should know better , actually , without naming names . Some people that are genuine sector thought leaders , and you see the post and it's it's got a very you know , that those kind of bullet points , that kind of short , punchy sentences . Yeah , yeah , yeah . It's just so obviously Claude or or something like that . So you you argue it back then . So what is working on LinkedIn ? You know , obviously we you you talked about this kind of um supply and demand equation shifting . Yep . So is it now more about quality content ? And how do we how do we get that right ? What is cutting through on LinkedIn ?

Niall Ratcliffe 12:19

Yeah,

Awareness Content Versus Phishing Content

Niall Ratcliffe 12:20

good question. Um so I see it now as there's two types of content. So, like my reason I'm on LinkedIn, by the way, we do a million in sales a year through LinkedIn, just on our agency. We have a three-person session. A million pounds in sales sales directly attributed to LinkedIn uh in our agency. So our biggest lead channel by by a gazillion miles.

Chris Norton 12:35

Um, you've got my interest now.

Niall Ratcliffe 12:36

Yeah, and I'll tell you how we do it is essentially there's two ways that I see content. So I don't really care my impressions that much at all. Um, but they're still important for brand awareness. People know us. We're a young agency, I'm a young guy, I need to build my brand and my name. Yeah. Um so I call that awareness content. And I'm focused on uh lessons only I've had, so lessons from personal experience um and unique opinions. So for example, uh my unique opinion, I'd say, is that the fact that LinkedIn's drastically changing the supply-demand equation. Um right now on LinkedIn, the general um like hot topic is people are still saying you can get loads of reach on LinkedIn, which you can. Um but the only reason I can say that is because I have experience over the last four years of seeing the platform evolve. It's a unique perspective only I can give. And virtually if anyone else gives it without my experience, it just doesn't have the value. Um so that's awareness, and that's essentially just like thought leadership.

Will Ockenden 13:21

And everyone you work with will have their own version of unique experiences.

Niall Ratcliffe 13:25

Exactly. You guys could talk about piano with I just couldn't talk about it. It wouldn't matter if I said the same thing as you.

Chris Norton 13:29

This is this is brand awareness content right right now. What we're doing right now is brand awareness content.

Niall Ratcliffe 13:34

And here we are sharing unique experiences. So this is like a perfect example of what I would say is like awareness content.

Will Ockenden 13:39

So that gets around homogenised , irrelevant , generic content .

Niall Ratcliffe 13:42

I can't share anything that's not from my personal experience . Um so this morning I shared uh a lesson um I learned from Daniel Priestley . I had dinner with Daniel Priestley in Belfast in 2021 . I know the name Daniel Priestley , why is that ? It's been on Diary of a CEO , big entrepreneur , he's got books , Key Person of Influence .

Chris Norton 13:55

Okay.

Niall Ratcliffe 13:56

Um client uh hired him for uh the lead keynote at his event . Uh we got dinner afterwards , the client , us , and Daniel Priestley , he shared loads of lessons . I can share those lessons from Daniel Priestley because I had a first hand experience of him teaching me . Um it just resonates way more than someone who just like spurts out how to get more followers , etc . Um , the other side of content on LinkedIn is fishing content . Um so my value of it is the high value audience on LinkedIn .

Chris Norton 14:19

Like reels and stuff.

Niall Ratcliffe 14:20

Um no, I'll explain. So I did that.

Chris Norton 14:23

That was a LinkedIn and fishing joke . Come back .

Niall Ratcliffe 14:26

Q critique. Uh I killed you on that. I killed you on the response.

Chris Norton 14:31

No, you did, that was awful.

Niall Ratcliffe 14:32

You'll get used to this . Um fishing content , right . LinkedIn's a public forum . So I can go through your post and I can see , and I'll get and I can steal your competitors' leads in a second . I can see everyone who's engaged with your content in the last well , forever . I can go through a manually if you wanted to . I can just go through everyone who's liked your post and I can pull them . Um so fishing content , essentially , what I will do is I will share content around our service and the things we do . Anyone who engages with it , I class them as if they've bit onto my reel . And what we do is then essentially extract that , we enrich the data for like email , phone number , and it goes straight to our sales team . So sales is naturally , um , if you do any , I've been hitting the table , I just realised . Uh sales is is generally speaking cold and high volume .

Will Ockenden 15:17

So you're building a warm audience through your own LinkedIn content.

Niall Ratcliffe 15:19

So exactly . So our sales team get fed people , and they can hit up the phone or or email them , whichever way they want to do it , and say , hi , I saw you engage on a bunch of Niall's content around this topic . Is that something you guys are chatting about internally ? They can say , no , not interested at all .

Will Ockenden 15:32

Do they find that's creepy though? No, not that.

Niall Ratcliffe 15:34

Or do you I mean what's yeah, I mean Because it seems like I can see on LinkedIn as well, you'll also see like, um, let's say we're connected. I might see We are, by the way. Yeah.

Chris Norton 15:42

Chris comments.

Niall Ratcliffe 15:47

I might see like you comment on someone else's post. It's how the platform works. So naturally it is how you can interact. And by our sales team channel just saying, like, oh look, I I just uh you could even say, Oh, look, bit of a weird one, but I saw you engaging on our sort of the positioning. I saw you engaging on sales content. Is that something you're chatting about internally? It's like, oh well, I did see that. And and we can start the sales conversation there.

Will Ockenden 16:07

So you essentially take it offline pretty quickly and hand it. I'm putting out content about what we do. But the I I assume the content is focused and sharp enough that you wouldn't engage with it unless you're in that buying what you're interested in.

Niall Ratcliffe 16:19

And this is the irony of anyone who's now posting like viral content is useless. I could post about how um I don't know, I'm a working class lad, my dad will go in a factory, and it can go viral. It's not that valuable to me, other than from a brand awareness standpoint. Yeah. But from like a sales standpoint, I can't do anything with it. If I have a post where I break down a workflow we use in our marketing, anyone who likes it could get 75 likes, let's say 20 of those in our ICP. That's that's an amazing like campaign on its own when we extract it for our sales team.

Will Ockenden 16:49

What sort of balance do we have between awareness and fishing content then ? 50-50 , or do you have kind of a recommendation ?

Niall Ratcliffe 16:54

It changes on it on a per basis. Like sometimes, if we're killing it pipeline-wise, I I'm I'm very much like I would say raw dogging my content.

Chris Norton 17:02

Raw dogging your content. Well, I'm in this.

Niall Ratcliffe 17:06

That's like I'm just like, I'm on the walk to work and I'm like firing up my post. This morning I posted about coming on this podcast, and I just like I was walking to the train station.

Will Ockenden 17:13

You see, I've given that a like. Am I gonna get am I gonna get a sales team on Monday? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Niall Ratcliffe 17:18

Um, so yeah, so like I'm saying that I'm raw dogging, so I'm not doing what we do for clients. Um, for clients, it's probably a bit more uh predictable, like the teams actually think about it. Um, but my honest take is pipeline's full, I'm firing out brand awareness more, probably 6040. Pipeline's not full, probably opposite 60-40. And it's just you know common sense.

Turning Engagement Into Sales Leads

Will Ockenden 18:23

And is is the is the kind of the um the opportunity area, and I've got a view on this, the individual or company accounts, or do the two need to seamlessly work in harmony?

Niall Ratcliffe 18:33

Um it's a great question, right? So I don't want to get too technical or too complicated. Um we like it.

Will Ockenden 18:40

We land wracking down. We've got a very sophisticated audience.

Chris Norton 18:43

Yeah. So the that's flattering the audience there, Andy. Apart from Andy. Yeah. Um Chris's mum, Tyler's mum. Um Tyler's not listening to this.

Will Ockenden 18:54

His mum is though.

Chris Norton 18:55

If you are listening, Tyler, give us some feedback.

Niall Ratcliffe 18:57

Yeah , yeah . Um so technical breakdown . So let me simple let me move the simple first . So when we talk about fishing content , I thought about doing it for us , right ? So we have our internal team , all posting . We have an incentive structure to get all our team posting . We can scrape that across the entire uh team based .

Will Ockenden 19:10

How does your incentive structure work out of uh out of curiosity?

Niall Ratcliffe 19:13

Really simple . Um you hit a certain follower count , you get a reward . Starts with an Audible voucher , scales up to our holiday away , a week away , we pay for everything . Uh we spend 3k uh and we got 17 million impressions last year uh through our team . Um simple . If you if you get to 5k followers , we'll pay for a weekend with you and your partner .

Will Ockenden 19:29

The reason I ask that , um , this this can probably be edited . Um I was I was mulling over how we can incentivise our team to start doing more of this . So that's really fascinating . So yeah .

Chris Norton 19:40

It is it is interesting , but uh it's the strategy that I'm interested in . Rather , there's there's some minutiae that he's trying to get you into . But uh for me , it's the actual the strategy of uh brand awareness content and fishing content , and then the tools that you're using because there must be some element of uh automation or so to grab to scrape all that data that's engaged with your content . So is there a tool that you're constantly scraping all the employees and are they allowing you to do that ?

Niall Ratcliffe 20:09

Because I haven't even got started yet . Oh god , we're surface level . Let's keep going , let's keep going . Um we're surface level right now . So I talked about taking my own engagement , right ? I've told you that now we scale it across the team , the team can post . We have 17 people . If you had 300 people , it's a different story . We work with uh an education company who have a sales team of 75 plus who all post content . It's a game changer . It's an absolute game changer . We don't even need to start the conversations with those leads . We can just filter , score them , and pass them on to the sales team to reach out to . And we can do individualise it . So Lydia's posted , here are the leads that engage on Lydia , here are the engaged that game engaged on Tom . So you can suddenly start funnelling to each sales team member . It gets very exciting when you start to scale this up , and this is why that sounds good . Uh that's actually quite impressive , I have to say .

Chris Norton 20:51

So yeah, keep going, keep going. Let's dive in. You've got to do it.

Niall Ratcliffe 20:54

This is great , right ? So right now we're we're essentially putting out content , we're fishing . Yeah . Anyone who engages , push the sales team . But you have the issue , your team , you know , some people are great at content , some people aren't . You don't know how much that would be , you're limited to that your audience . Um it's a public forum . So why would we only scrape our own content ? So actually , if I was a PR firm , I'd pick the top 10 PR firms in the country , I'd pick their entire leadership team , and I would then scrape all their data . So not only am I taking our lead , but I'm stealing my competitors . Let me give you an example . Uh , let's say you guys don't like LinkedIn , you don't like posting on LinkedIn , but I am amazing at PR and I'm better than you at LinkedIn . So I'm gonna start building my personal brand , I'm gonna start talking about PR . Uh people engaging on it , like what are they ? They're interested in PR too . So if I can filter for my own ICP , let them do the hard work , and I will call up at the last second and say , hi , uh , John , a bit of a weird one . You've been engaging on a bunch of content on PR . Is that something you're looking at internally ?

Will Ockenden 21:47

They can do you're thinking what I'm thinking.

Niall Ratcliffe 21:49

I'm fucking Where do we sign?

Chris Norton 21:51

Yeah. I'm fucking in it. He's got me in it. Yeah. This is some of the better we we teach LinkedIn strategy, and this this sounds like a sales engine. Yeah, I would call this a sales engine LinkedIn content strategy, right? Something like that.

Niall Ratcliffe 22:07

So this is this is what I say. I say the old marketer finds creative ways to get attention on their brand. The new marketer finds creative ways to steal their competitors' leads.

Will Ockenden 22:17

I feel like we're gonna have to edit some of this out.

Chris Norton 22:19

Oh, definitely. Um while you're listening to this, uh you're gonna need to cut some of this out. This is gonna be We don't want to give too much away. Yeah, but I I'm well boy.

Niall Ratcliffe 22:28

Yeah, so so we're just getting started as well here. So let's okay, let's say um we we work with a lot of traditional B2B businesses, like manufacturing companies. It's very tough, like tough for them to get engagement, um, tough for their competitors to get engagement. Like, what do you scrape then? Um, there's a bunch of different other things we can scrape. Um, influencers. Daniel Priestley, you know of, talks a lot about business growth and lead generation. If someone's engaging on Daniel Priestley, probably curious about lead generation, maybe they should talk to us. If there's a PR influencer, doesn't have a big agency, but is talking about PR, maybe it's interesting for us to reach out to them. Or maybe we keyword search on LinkedIn, again, this is a public forum, and we find anyone who's posting our PR, we can scrape all the engagement from them. And for the context, it costs us 0.002p per profile. We scrape on that. That's our internal cost, as long as we get it.

Chris Norton 23:18

I feel like we're going for a sales presentation here. And I'm like, I've signed already. How much does this cost, roughly? Go on, give me a question.

Niall Ratcliffe 23:25

Our prices will range from 4K to 15k a moment.

Chris Norton 23:28

Oh, right. So the big boys, like, because you've the more data.

Niall Ratcliffe 23:31

The data you're scraping, yeah. Okay, keep going then.

Chris Norton 23:32

So keep going for your platform. I'm interested in that.

Niall Ratcliffe 23:34

And we're just getting started , right ? So like um , and what I'm talking about here , guys , is is is the transition from marketing um from being all uh demand gen , so we're gonna generate demand , and literal just like signal-based capturing . So back in the day , everyone saw marketing as demand-gen . So you'd go out and you'd be like , right , you start a PR uh company , and

Signals Beat Personalised Templates

Niall Ratcliffe 23:53

you're like , right , we need to convince everyone they need to do PR . But it's like , why are you gonna put all the effort into convince people to do PR ? The realistic view is you have a total decibel market , a TAM , which is already there . There's currently a set group of people that use PR and will continue to use PR . And all the time , those people will come in and out of the market . Yeah . So you're like , we need a new PR agency or interesting PR . So what do you do when you're looking , you're essentially entering the market as you start consuming more content , you start researching , you start looking at websites . Um what we actually end up doing is we'll just stack these signals . So you can build out a TAM , like very simply in like a tool like Clay , it would take me three seconds to build out your TAM . You'd just say company level , what size of companies do you work with , what locations , on a person level , what's the key person you talk with ? I can build out your TAM . Your TAM stays solid , it doesn't move . TAM stands for Total Addressable Market . Total . Every customer at the total addressable market . Total . Addressable . Addressable accent .

Chris Norton 24:46

I was trying to understand. Total addressable market.

Niall Ratcliffe 24:49

Right . And that is anyone who could be a customer right now . So right now , there is everyone who could be a customer is there in your market . You're you're actually your marketing . Maybe you maybe you wrote one person to convince them to do PR . Generally speaking , you don't want a client that's never done PR that you convinced them to do PR . You want someone who gets it , it's coming for an agency . So that's your TAM . And that is , like I said , virtually stable . Um and all I'm looking for constantly is a signal that one of the people in market , key signals we track , engaging on our content , engaging on a competitor's content , engaging on an influence content . But then we have the excite uh influence , like a big player in the space , but we get exciting , right ? Let's say you're a packaging company . Um the old way to scale a packaging company , B2B , would be to think of it as demand gen . So I would say , imagine you pulled a wooden block , the Leeds Town Centre , you stood on it , and you started shouting at how you did packaging for brands . You know , let's say you did the labels for food and bev companies . You'd stand on that town square , you'd shout , does anyone want anything ? And every so often someone would walk past and be like , Oh , actually , we are looking for that . And essentially that's like old marketing , like content . You just put it out and just wait and hope someone floated past it . On the other side of it , what I can do is , okay , what's a key signal that someone would need new packaging ? We all know Ocado , right ? The delivery platform . Where , well , they publicly list every company that's on Ocado . So I could see which brands have listed on Ocado in the last month . And I don't know if you'd listed on Ocado , you suddenly get into a very competitive market , you've got money , because you've just been listed on Ocado , and you're probably in charge of growth . So recently with a packaging company , our signal was we layered the signals of people who'd use their website , people who engage on the content , and people who've been listed on Ocado . So you talk about the personalised messages , right ? The personalised messages on LinkedIn are people who are like building a very broad list of their time and just firing out personalisation . What actually matters is the relevance . So if I reach out to you and say , you've just been listed on Ocado , really competitive market . If you ever need any packaging needs , you know , probably worth a chat now rather than later . I don't need to I don't need to say , Chris , you know , love that you went to this university and you live here and you've got this many staff . It doesn't matter . I'm focusing on relevance . Like I've hit you at the right time and I'm layering signals . Let me give you one last example . Let's say I was the best blowing my mind here . This is great . Let's say I was the best copywriter in the country , and you brought me in to copyright a code email campaign for you . Yeah . I could write the best email to sell someone on doing PR , and I could sell it to every single person that could possibly be a customer , your whole time . So we've built a list of the thousands of companies in the UK , and I've got the best email anyone could possibly write . Who's going to buy from that email ? Only the people that are in the market . Only the people that are looking for PR agency .

Chris Norton 27:25

It's like when you're buying a car, isn't it? It doesn't matter. You can afford a car, you're only going to be looking for a car when you need a new car.

Niall Ratcliffe 27:31

Yeah, exactly.

Chris Norton 27:31

Same thing.

Niall Ratcliffe 27:32

And it's the exact same thing in any industry . And the issue is , is back in the day , the data belonged to the enterprise massive businesses . So 6sense was a data platform . It's like 60 , 70 grand a year . People couldn't afford it . They'd give you a fucking the metric could be like , this person may or may not be curious about this . And it's like , great , paid 70 grand for that signal . But nowadays it's it's fully accessible . We're a small team . We have three uh I work on a GTM team as well . So let's say four people in our GTM team , and we're able to extract like billions of data points every month , scrape them for our clients . Um we can use AI for it , we can use the tools for it . It's like the reason this never worked five years ago is because you guys couldn't get the data . Today you can .

Will Ockenden 28:11

How long before um LinkedIn stops it? Yeah, basically. Because LinkedIn's got a long track record of locking stuff down. I I get it, this is slightly different. It's not um it's a slightly different way of using LinkedIn.

Chris Norton 28:23

He's using multiple data points though . What I like about this is you're using multiple data points , you're using the logic nature , the

Data Workflows And Website Signals

Chris Norton 28:30

the fact that the the best thing about LinkedIn is it's targeting , like you just said , the fact that you can target and you can literally add people to your network , but the other side of it , like you can scrape data , which you're not allowed to , I don't think . Uh , but you can you can do everybody does it , don't they ? Um , and then you've got these other factors that you're pulling in to give you a picture of an audience . Okay , so let's say , um , so people listening to this , they're we're we're a small business . So let's say , like , yeah , we've used the PR . So let's let's use the podcasting analogy , right ? We've got four or five podcast clients , include , and then there's ourselves that do this . Um , if we want if we wanted to go out to people that wanted to launch a podcast , for instance , yeah , um how long would it be ? So you I go , great , Niall . Um , you know , we'd like to sign up for a three-month test which was to work on your how long does it normally take before the end of and you're gonna go , oh I'll guarantee you took 25 leads by the end of month , week five .

Niall Ratcliffe 29:27

I was gonna say if you said I want to start a fresh three-month test, we'd tell you to fuck up. You're talking my language, but like this. Yeah, we don't do anything for three-month-wise. Uh uh don't touch it, we don't need to. Like uh. And and second of all, um, it takes us a fucking massive amount of time and money to get this. Just set it up. Set it up. Yeah. It doesn't make sense for us. Um but the so let's say that's like looking.

Chris Norton 29:47

So what's what's your contract time then? It's 12 months. Is it? We'll do we'll do six month trials. We'll do six-month trials. And how how long is it before you get a le a like a decent um this I know that I know it's completely generic that, because you you've got you how many clients have you got? Uh 40, 40 something. And and shortest period that you've got a client and longest period never, you know, and then suddenly it hasn't worked for surely.

Niall Ratcliffe 30:08

Yeah , six months , shortest client , uh , longest client we've had four or five years since the start . We've all no , I mean shortest period to win uh an our client . Well literally , we just worked with Personnel Checks . I I know Jack , the CEO , uh one of the amazing uh DBS chicken company . Their campaign went live last week . Uh their first booked call was this week , uh , within seven days . Other times it's longer . Um , but the better and better we get , the shorter that time frame comes . Um and let me let me let me um I'm fascinated by this . There's a couple of things I want to talk about to rein in as well . Just about LinkedIn , first of all . So uh you mentioned LinkedIn and you said when how long do they shut it down ? They could literally close LinkedIn LinkedIn as a platform . Like I couldn't , like it , I wouldn't batch an eyelid . I'd lose 60 , 000 followers , probably upset about that . Um but it's just one of our many signals that we're tracking . Um like website , right , for you guys . So I don't know how many website visitors you do a month , we do 5k a month . Um what we do on the website is illegal on the website to get person-level data in the UK . It's not legal in the US , but legal in the UK . Um but all we do is we track , you can get company level data by reverse IP tracking , very legal .

Chris Norton 31:12

What do they call that ? Lead Forensics .

Niall Ratcliffe 31:13

Lead Forensics are a great example , right ? So Lead Forensics will tell you , oh , Amazon's been on your website . Fucking useless . Chase Lead Forensics for three K months .

Chris Norton 31:21

There's only 60,000 employees at Amazon.

Niall Ratcliffe 31:23

It's not really where it brings it down to Amazon . It says , okay , but right , it's it's still useful data , right ? Who's been on your website ? So what can you do with it ? So all we do is we'll build a database of the key leadership team in each organisation , and we just match it . So on our uh and I'll show I can show you on my laptop after our website . Um we have 5k come in . Um let's say we identify 2 , 500 , we then do a people match . So let's say you guys have been on our website , um , the PR agency . All we'll do is we'll then scrape and find head of marketing , CEO , leadership team , head of sales . We'll reach out to all four of them . And it's like , well , someone's talking about us internally , so that's another signal . So um LinkedIn's just one of many signals , it's a great signal . Um the second thing is uh scraping . Um scraping used to be a really interesting thing where the only way you could do it was with a tool like PhantomBuster and it'd like to take your LinkedIn cookies , it was messy . Um AI agents completely changed that . Um so like how can if you manually today could go on my profile , click on likes , and you could drag and drop each profile one by one into a tab , they're never gonna stop it . The only way they could stop it is if they did like a Twitter and turned off being able to view who liked it . And guess what ? It completely eradicates that it would be a networking platform . Um so it's not scraping data with the way people think about it nowadays . It's like uh AI obs just opened up a massive opportunity to for data to be accessible to the SME .

Chris Norton 32:42

So so you you you're doing you do the content , the brand awareness content , yeah . You do the uh the real content , what do we call it ? Fishing content . I went like that . I'm gonna start doing it on podcast for our audio and listeners there . I did this . That doesn't help , does it ? Um He cast a line with his hand . But is the is the process of what you're doing ? So you're doing this content and you're doing these other things , and it's all part of a process , all the services . So , like if we had if you've got like , say we've got 10 senior directors , yeah , you you're doing content for all 10 of them . Is that how it works ? Or how does it work ?

Niall Ratcliffe 33:18

This will really depend client to client , right ? So um essentially when a client comes in , we'll map out what do we think . So we need enough data for this to work . So when does this fail is a good question . And it's like we don't have enough data . There's only a certain amount of signals we can track . So we'll do hiring signals , uh headcount growth , uh like Ocado listings , these unique ones . We recently did uh for an IT company , we scraped care homes uh and their uh CQC checks and when they failed their IT section on it . There's a lot of data out there nowadays that we can access . But the only way this will fail is we don't have enough data . Um and essentially internally it would probably still work just like we don't have data to give you an ROI on our costs , um , which is fine . Um so when an agency came to us , we look at okay , if we're posting content , do we think we can get enough traction to get data from it ? For you guys , it's PR . No brainer . Obviously , content would work , it'd be a great signal for you guys . Website , if you've got at least 4K website visitors , I'd say website is a great signal . I'd then track competitors and influencers . They're simple signals for you . Another company might come to us . Um , so we just brought on a client um that's in like a very technical hardware space , uh , and they do like a hardware product that's very big , it's like I don't really need to take on their leadership team because it's just gonna be so tough to get traction that the data we get from it just isn't gonna be valuable . Um so we'll look at their competitors , have they got any competitors ? No . Um and the GTM engineer that that uh on the account actually built out this amazing workflow where essentially we're scraping uh certain companies that have mechanical drives in the system and when they're on a growth trajectory , which means they're gonna build more size , which is gonna mean they need more of this product . Um so what we're essentially doing in the onboarding process uh and the sales process is mapping out which signals are gonna drive enough data for this to work .

Chris Norton 34:54

Yeah.

Niall Ratcliffe 34:55

For 90%, it makes sense to do leadership team content. It's just an easy signal for us.

Will Ockenden 35:00

But you do that, you do it, you create their content for where so there'll be B2B marketers listening to this who are big fans of you know blog posts, white papers, all the kind of traditional B2B marketing tactics. Where does that leave all of that? Are you are you saying this is the the new frontier and B2B marketers can can can just forget about all of that stuff,

Technical Marketing Without Losing Trust

Will Ockenden 35:21

or does that still play a role?

Niall Ratcliffe 35:23

Uh you know, I I want to be really careful here not to come across as too arrogant. Um, there's a reason I'm at the table at 25, and that is like we are like at the forefront of what's new. Um, and generally speaking, if you're doing stuff that was five, ten years ago, uh my belief is that we're gonna eat you alive over the next kind of five years. Um we're too technical. Um, let me talk about this quickly, but I'll go back to your point is uh I am a strong believer that marketing is become a technical sport. Earlier I said the old marketer finds creative ways to get attention, the new marketer finds creative ways to steal their leads. Um and the reason I say that is because uh we suddenly, over the last three years, got this massive global access to data and uh the tools to be able to do something so scalable. We're a 17-person agency today. If we were started 10 years ago, we would be like a 50, 100 person agency just to do what we're doing, like it would take so much. Um and uh a lot of the terms people can't start using is marketing engineer. And I think it's a bit like a I don't know, gentlemen. It's one of them terms, it's a bit like a bit of hype behind it at the minute. But I think it's a really interesting way to think about what's happening because a marketer is no longer someone who sits in a boardroom and thinks about creative things, because the person who is more technical can do, can, can essentially steal the things that they're doing. Attention is very much a a commodity, um, and and it's who can use data and access the data the best is going to start out competing the other people.

Will Ockenden 36:44

Is there not a risk though that you lean in too far into the data and the numbers and this kind of technical side of it, at risk of reputation, for example, and brand awareness? Because that will always be an important factor, right?

Chris Norton 36:57

I don't I don't think so. Because if if you're looking at the signals that he's talking about here, you're looking at the Yeah, but they're not gonna want to talk to you unless you've got a great reputation in the market. I think it's a good question. I think that um Yeah, sort of see what you're saying.

Will Ockenden 37:07

I get what you're saying. So you can't abandon that. And just to be clear, that's that's that's PR, that's content marketing.

Chris Norton 37:11

Yeah , um that's it , cover your own bases so we find stone fire .

Will Ockenden 37:14

But it's true, isn't it? You you you can't you can't go too far in the direction of data because suddenly you'll lack anything of substance.

Niall Ratcliffe 37:21

And I'm what I'm talking about is like revenue growth customer acquisition here . But there's there's many different aspects of what you need for like I we have a hundred thousand followers . Um I said I post brand awareness content . We're trying to build our brand . Um we're we're literally we do a live event um online with great speakers , it costs probably a thousand pounds an event . We get , let's say , maybe one client from it if we're that's a reputation of brand awareness , isn't it ? It's part of it . Here I'm talking what I'm talking about here is like revenue growth customer acquisition . Um I'm not talking about I I compare what we're doing to paid ads in a way . Yeah . Yeah . We're trying to convert customers . We're not trying to league gen . Yeah , it's a league gen . You're a league gen . Um and you know , but one thing I think you have to understand is that the people we're talking to , the people we're working with , don't need to grow their market or their brand . So do you know PerfectTed ? It's exploded , it's like a matcha drink . It was on Dragons' Den , Steven Bartlett invested . It's like a green , you know , matcha , right ? Yeah . Yeah . So matcha's exploding , right ? PerfectTed launched this brand , it's canned matcha , but no one drinks matcha . So they their TAM is tiny . So they have to invest all of their money in actually convincing people to drink matcha . Building the category , which is so expensive . Category building , expanding it . The customers we take . For the benefit of everybody else , yeah . So everyone else then can can steal it . The customers we're talking to and the clients we're working with is like the industry's built , their brand's built . Yeah . Generally speaking , you couldn't afford it if your brand wasn't built . Yeah . Um and they've come to us to to drive growth . Um , I think for us , we're a small agency . You guys probably never heard of us six months ago . Um I guess even at our point , we don't necessarily need that much more brand . Uh , but like I said , the simple thing is we're doing awards , we're doing PR as well . Um , because I'm conscious that we want to be a big brand , but it locked up . Why are you doing PR ? Why am I doing PR ? Um it's reputational . Uh like you said , it's like relevance , I think , is the number one thing that will convert to a sales call . But you know , next minute it's a committee and it's a board meeting , and they're Googling you and they're finding trust . And you need that element to it . Um , relevance will get you foot in the door and start the conversation . But at the end of the day , you still need to be , you know , you can't have a slap dash website and there you go , Chris .

Chris Norton 39:26

I've argued to argue. He tried to justify his own salary again. That's all he's trying to do here. Like, what? Because he thinks, oh shit, lead gen's gonna take easy.

Will Ockenden 39:35

Well, it's it goes hand in hand, doesn't it? Because you you you know you you're right, you set you know you can get 20 leads, but if you've got zero credibility in the market, yeah, then that's not gonna go anywhere.

Chris Norton 39:45

But I suppose it depends if you whoever you are listening to this podcast right now , why are you on LinkedIn ? Ask yourself that one question . And most people are either on it to get um another job , um , a better job , or to get new business enquiries .

Will Ockenden 40:03

I don't think anyone's on it for the love of the content, are they?

Chris Norton 40:05

No, no, no, definitely not, not the AI.

Will Ockenden 40:08

I suppose there's a learn there's a learning element for it.

Chris Norton 40:10

Before we go any further, though, because I'm aware that we're gonna be the D um I I wanted to delve into your um obviously this show is all about mistakes. So I wanted to die. Have you made made any mistakes in lead gen?

Niall Ratcliffe 40:21

Too many mistakes, too many mistakes.

Will Ockenden 40:23

So I had let's have a big one come

Costly Lead Gen Mistakes

Will Ockenden 40:24

up. Like we like horrific mistakes.

Niall Ratcliffe 40:26

Right . So I think people massively overlook the channel and underrate the signal . Um so what I mean by that is right , I see a channel , it's just a vehicle to get a message across . Um I'm talking about direct mail , code email , LinkedIn messages , code calling . If you go on LinkedIn , there'll be someone who's saying , code calling is the way , that's a silver bullet , code emails , everyone's seen it , paid ads are the way , everyone has a thing that you should be doing , right ? But that's just a vehicle to deliver the message . Um and what you actually need is a signal of the relevance , which we've talked about . So where's the mistake in it ? Well , I kind of realise this early on in the journey . Uh by the way , I'm young , I'm 25 . I don't I know a lot of little things , but not a lot of uh big things . I need more time in the industry . And a thesis I had two years ago um was I kind of realise the channel doesn't matter , it's just a vehicle . And I said , So why are we only doing LinkedIn , which is what we're doing at the time ? But I said , Well , let's just expand the channels that we were doing . Um so over a quarter , we literally just added channel , channel , channel , channels . We added code email , we had a direct mail , and it was Christmas , and I was on holiday , and we had our team in we were in an office in Wilmslow at the time , in a um like a Henry Ford production line doing this direct mail campaign for this client . And they were sending me videos , and I was like , what the fuck are we doing ? Like stamping letters and packaging . I was like , I've done that . Yeah , and I was just like , I don't , I don't not believe in direct mail , but I was like , um , at the time we hadn't figured out the signal element of it . So what we were doing is just like we'd built a big list and we were direct mailing . Do you know how I said if you write perfect email and you send it to the whole people , put TAM , like the only ones who do it , we'd essentially done that , but rather than just doing cold email , we'd done direct mail , code email , LinkedIn DMs to something like 10 , 000 people . And it was like , one minute , like we've the thesis was kind of there where it's a case of like , yeah , every channel is viable , um , but we just didn't have the setup of the infrastructure to do it in the right way . What should have happened is if I did it again , um , I would have uh literally just the signal-based stuff we're talking about , and I would have sent the direct mail to um let me rewind slide . I didn't talk about this . We s we didn't score accounts , we use Claude Code to score accounts . It's really key , right ? Um every pound you spend on marketing , you want it to be going to the best accounts possible . Um and ABM is not a new thing , but we score accounts . So when we do these signals , not only do we find the signal , but we'll score it based on their ICP . So let's say you want to talk to people 200 to 500 staff , 500 staff's better for you , 500 staff gets a higher rating . Let's say they're based in Leeds , that's massive for you guys . You think you could sign them quicker ? Um , I would have done it differently . I would have scored the account , I would have done direct mail to the top 10 accounts , I would have done code email and LinkedIn to it . Yeah , I would have just tiered it . And it was just immaturity . Um and it cost us , we lost that client . At the time it was quite a big client for us , maybe like 6K a month . Uh the campaigns didn't deliver , uh , and we just made no money on it . Like it was like we spent the 6K on the campaign , and like it was virtually like a loss of a month's . Uh let me tell you a bigger one though , is um when we first started having this idea of what I'm talking about now with this signal-based approach , we didn't know how to position it , right ? There's not really a word for it . It's like , do you know how you guys say we do PR ? It's like , what do I do ? It's like lead gen , but like , are you cold called ? It's it was there was no word for it . Signal-based lead gen , I think . Yeah , so it's like it's it was quite tough . Um , so we had this idea of a term called creative ABM . So creative account-based marketing . Our idea behind it was that um we were creatively finding signals in the market , and then we were doing account-based marketing , we were finding the best accounts and going after them . Um we were trying to fit it into a box . And at the time , uh transparently , we felt like we had the Midas touch . I was maybe 20 . This is a similar time to that direct mail campaign . So I was maybe 23 . Um , you know , we were making loads of money , and nothing had ever gone wrong for us , transparently , like little things , but nothing big . Uh so we did this whole video . Uh , we had our video team , we like spent probably a week on these videos and these promo videos . We launched it , um , new service offering , like creative ABM , and it was just like crickets , no leads , nothing came in . And and we sat there , me and Morgan , my co-founder and brother , and we were just like , fuck . Like we'd actually paid for advisory services on that launch as well , from an amazing person we still work with on enough today . Um , and like we were kind of like mapped out the idea and everything seemed to make sense . And we launched it . And it's like the first time in a long time that just like massive amounts of doubt had just seeped in in terms of like , oh my god , like we don't have our finger on the pulse . And about six months after that , we were just constantly questioning ourselves like , are we in the wrong direction here ? Is this gonna work ? We don't know positioning anymore . Maybe we don't know how to launch a campaign . Just like the simple things of like we'd we'd fucked up royally , spent a lot of money on this launch , and it didn't work . And ironically , um , it was just a positioning issue . Like we had the idea and we had the direction we were going in , uh , and we just weren't able to communicate it yet .

Chris Norton 45:11

Isn't that the same thing we were talking about before? You're creating you're trying to create a category though.

Niall Ratcliffe 45:16

Yeah.

Chris Norton 45:16

You were creating a category of something that people you were creating something so new that people didn't know that they needed it yet. And we failed to communicate. That's a bit like where AI is now. Everyone's going, oh my god, AI is amazing, it's gonna change everything. Uh the technology's brilliant, but actually humans can only use it to about 3% of what it because we've the big corporates can't embrace it yet. They're not quite open to how they they now they just use it as a chat. They don't fully understand how to embrace it properly.

Will Ockenden 45:45

So before we move on from failings and mistakes, and I've got to steal this one from you. So you mentioned you've got an older brother. Yes.

Mindset And The Drive Behind It

Will Ockenden 45:51

What would he say is your biggest flaw? And I know that's an interview question you sometimes ask people.

Niall Ratcliffe 45:56

You'd say that um I think that this sounds really sad, it's not. I think I come across as like inherently miserable when I'm not. I'm very like baseline.

Chris Norton 46:03

You are from Manchester though, right?

Niall Ratcliffe 46:06

Um see what I did there. So Morgan's very Morgan wants our sales function.

Will Ockenden 46:10

And he's he's your business partner as well. Yeah, right.

Niall Ratcliffe 46:12

Um 5050, he's my older brother, and he's very high energy. So he has like high highs, low lows. Higher energy than you. Yeah, I'm low energy. Fuck you, man. I'm not a podcaster, yeah. Um, so like, for example, we'll win a massive contract, and he'll celebrate, and I'll be like, yeah, it's gonna be like, let's start delivering on it. And he's like, No, we this is great. I think that uh it's my biggest flaw. It's like I really struggle to enjoy the wins. Um I have this uh I have really strong belief in us, and I feel like to me, I said this to someone yesterday, I got dinner with uh one of our old employees, um, and she was saying, like, oh, you have a massive business. And I was like, just to be clear, I have a very small business and I wake up every day feeling like I'm failing. Like I'm like, I'm not at the place that I want to be. And like for me, I wake up this morning and I'm like, the business isn't where I want it to be. Why? Um, I just have high expectations of myself. Um I don't know. Let me tell you a story about background. Um, so I come from a very working-class family. My dad, no qualifications, left school at 16, um, went to uh work in a factory. My mum, her dad left when she was 14, stole the money from the family. There were six of them in a council house that had no money. Um, I feel like they worked their whole lives to give me a glimmer of hope to do something with mine. And I I like see my purpose to like completely change the generational wealth of my family. Um, I want my grandkids to wonder why they live in a big house and they think that's because your granddad, like he he made it. Um, and right now I'm just a long way off that. Like I'm I'm obviously successful.

Chris Norton 47:42

No, you're 25. But fuck you now.

Will Ockenden 47:45

Calm down, you're 25. Do you get does that kind of lack of um I'm not gonna call it a lack of energy? Yeah, the lack of getting carried away with the highs, do you also does that also mean you don't get too preoccupied with the lows?

Niall Ratcliffe 47:58

Oh yeah, lows don't lows don't impact me much.

Will Ockenden 48:00

So you're kind of to be honest, steady away is the way to be in an agency. Don't get too don't get too hyped on the wins and don't get too depressed by the lows.

Niall Ratcliffe 48:07

And uh I've involved a lot of family in the business. My mum works in the business, my partner works in the business. Um pre, by the way, we're dating pre of coming in. I didn't start uh bring an employee home. Um special skiing you've got. No, it's a uh we were dating pre uh coming into the business.

Chris Norton 48:26

Special ski. You were asking about incentives earlier.

Niall Ratcliffe 48:30

Um she's got 40,000 followers and now she's dating the boss. Um but no, I think free weekend away for them. It's like uh they find it really frustrating where like, let's say it's been a bad week, big client's left, and it's just like it's not, I'm carrying on as normal. Um when it's a win, it's like I'm carrying on as normal. Um I think it's just tougher for people to be it's good for me. I I I'm happy with it, I wouldn't change it. I just think for them it's tough to be around if she's stressing at home and like um she works on our accounts team, so like let's say she's lost a big client and she knows how much it's impacted the business. Um and I'm like, you know, it is what it is, like we're keeping going.

Will Ockenden 49:05

But then is um is it Morgan? Yeah, Morgan, yeah. So he gets wildly celebrates the wins. Does he get in the in incredible lows when you do have the kind of thing?

Niall Ratcliffe 49:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to speak for Morgan too much, but he's um yeah, he feels it more than I do. Well it sounds like the the partnership works.

Chris Norton 49:20

Where where do you think so? Let's call it create what do you what what is the description category you've now given it? So it's creative um ABM.

Niall Ratcliffe 49:27

Yeah, so um it's funny, but we're currently like uh working on a new website where it like articulate it. Um I do know what we're making it broader.

Delivery Model And How To Reach Niall

Niall Ratcliffe 49:35

So um I would describe it now as just like revenue growth. Like we're like a RevOps team. RevOps is a kind of a new term, right? We help you grow revenue. Yeah, I don't like League Gen because of its association with the classic lead generation. Um and also like what an understatement of what we do. Where like I'm not cold calling a list of people, like I'm literally giving you this and being like, hi, this is a person that probably wants to buy for me right now, and it's a dream client for you guys, and you should reach out to them today.

Chris Norton 50:01

Like, so are you passing on? So, like, say we say you've got a new business person in your agency or company, so say you've a brand, you've got new sales. Are you guys just passing on the data and then the sales team call that person or email that person? So we do we do both.

Niall Ratcliffe 50:16

Um so let's say you were a client of ours . Um the way it would be set up is you have a lead bot , which we automate into basically how much we use as that project management tool . Um we integrate with your CRM uh and we do outbound . So let's say your dream client was you want to sign um Leeds United Football Club . That might be controversial . Um Leeds United Football Club , all right ? And let's say we we triggered that actually the head of marketing , uh , Leeds United , had just been on your website and engaged on your posts . We would then send them a LinkedIn outreach message from someone on your team , we'd send them an email from someone on your team , and then we would score the lead , put it through the lead bot onto your so you have a notification , and then we'd add it straight to your CRM for your sales team . And it comes through as this person , account , uh , account score , persona score , lead score , um , trigger , so you know exactly what's happened , recommendation , and it's like call right now . Okay . And that way , uh the reason we do that is because like um again , the value of what we do isn't just lead generation . So I could code email that person , I could send a LinkedIn message to that person . If they don't reply , does that mean we've done no good work ? It's like , well , no . Like my job's not to close the deal . Like my job is just to show you who's in market and do my best to start a conversation with them . If Leeds United have just been on your website , like it's fucking really valuable for me to tell you that . Um or if they're engaged with your LinkedIn content , it's really valuable for me to tell you that . If my LinkedIn messages fails to get a response because of bad copy , she didn't see it , uh , whatever , like that's that's a small percentage of our work . And I think it's just as valuable for me to give you that lead and tell you why I've given you it as it would be to be like , hi , I've just started a conversation . Um so it's a mixture that we deliver .

Will Ockenden 51:51

Fascinating. People will be listening to this thinking I need to give Niall a shout. So, how can people find out about your company and get in touch with you?

Niall Ratcliffe 51:59

Um , notice . co is our website . Um , message me on LinkedIn , Niall Ratcliffe . Uh , post there virtually every day .

Will Ockenden 52:05

Um, but yeah, that's the simplest way. I've got a feeling you're gonna be getting a few calls.

Chris Norton 52:09

Yeah. Um, and you've been on the show now, yeah. Um, if you were us, who's the next person you'd interview on our podcast and why?

Niall Ratcliffe 52:17

Uh Jack Frimston. Uh Jack Frimston has an amazing business podcast called We Have a Meeting. He's one of really good friends of mine in Manchester. Um, uh Amazon best-selling business offer. He does code calling. He owns code calling agency, one of the biggest in Manchester. Um, he's an incredible speaker.

Will Ockenden 52:31

Do you have arguments about what approaches what approach is most effective?

Niall Ratcliffe 52:35

So ironically, like we talked about this last week, and um I essentially like I do today, I talked to everything we do today, and someone can just go away and steal it. Like, um, other than the tools, which like no, there's a million tools that do the things we're doing. Um, you just have to like stack them together. Um, and like I think he understands that like cold calling is an addition to what we do. Um and this is what I'm talking about, channels. Channels are vehicles. I'm not I'm I'm channel agnostic. I love cold calling, I love the phones, I love emails, I love LinkedIn messages. Um, I just know the thing that actually moves the needle is the signal. Uh Jack understands that too. Um, and he's trying to integrate a lot of what we do into that business as well. But he's amazing.

Will Ockenden 53:11

He was great. Well if you can give us an intro, I'll introduce it. Um awesome. No, thank you for being on the show. Fascinating episode.

Chris Norton 53:18

Thanks for coming on, mate. Yeah, so much guys.