The Wise Why

Jordan Farrar
Ohh no very kind. Far too kind. Yes, I’m Jordan Farrer. I run a coke restio. We’re a small business in Whitney in West Oxfordshire. We work with other businesses helping them get found online. We do this with Bobby. Building effective websites are tailored to convert and then by driving traffic to said websites. So with various digital marketing. Strategies such as paper, click advertising, search engine optimization and all of that good good digital marketing practise.

Kirsty van den Bulk
All the stuff that confuses people, right? Because let’s be honest, pay for click is a minefield. SEO search engine optimization really confuses people and can lead to the point. Of almost inactivity and then your website, you can just go. I don’t know where to start or you go and buy a template and you start building it. And then you go what? All hours lost in the back end of your website, so I wonder if you could just simplify what search engine optimization is a little bit about. Paper click and just take some of that fear away and then we’ll. Touch on websites in a minute.

Jordan Farrar
No, certainly. So I suppose common trend we tend to find with businesses is a bit of a, I don’t know, slight confusion in that there are certain businesses that when they get a new website, they expect it to change their business overnight, expect the leads to be coming in the conversions to. Again, come in, be a product sales or inquiries. If they’re a service based business. That’s not necessarily the case, so I suppose the way we tend to describe. The digital platform is that a good website has a job and that job should be to encourage the user to take the next logical step in your sales process and that can be submitting a contact form, picking up the phone and giving you guys a call, subscribing to your e-mail list, whatever that looks like. In your overall marketing strategy. And a good website will do that very well. So then you’ve got the next problem. Once a website tends to go live in that, OK, well, we’ve got this wonderful website, we’ve got this asset for our business. But how do we get the right person onto the website in order to enable it to do its job? And that’s when you’re looking at various forms of digital marketing. So you’re looking at. Have you? Have you got a a good social media following? Can you drive traffic that way to again enable the website to convert? If not, should we look at search engine optimization or should we look at paid advertising? Obviously we tend to specialise in search engine optimization paid adverts. Rising and the two key differing factors well, it is pay per click is pretty straightforward. You pay per click every time somebody is clicking through to your website. Your your paying for that privilege. Search engine optimization tends to be a lot more organic, so rather than paying to be at the top. You’re doing work on the website, creating really great content, making sure that it’s technically optimised, that you’ve done your keyword research, and that it’s showing. Showing users or satisfying search intent is what we would say, so it’s displaying the content that people are actually searching for and all of the other hundred 203 hundred different things that are involved on a search engine optimization campaign. Hopefully that answers that.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It does. I won’t touch a little bit more on SEO search engine optimization because a lot of people.

Kirsty van den Bulk
I think when you’re creating your website, you’re talking at your customer, but of course you’re not. You’re actually writing your website to maximise what somebody would type into somewhere. Like I’m not gonna name them, but the big search and search engines out there they would it. And that’s I think where people get confused. I don’t know if you can explain that. The tweak in the thought process when you’re starting to write your content.

Jordan Farrar
Yes. So and I’ve touched on this earlier on this week when I was on get radio, rich keyword research is is the term. So I suppose there are businesses small and big. Out there that overlooked this. Initial step of SEO strategy and that’s really getting an understanding of what your customers or what your target audience are putting into Google. So we call it keyword research and and and going through this process you can essentially have a a big list of questions that people are asking. Or for example we’ve had. Or we we’ve identified that. Our clients target customers, so one of the projects that. We’re working on they. Were surprised to find that actually we provide this service, we call it this service because we’re we understand what the industry terminology is for this service. However, our target customers are putting something completely different into. Whichever search engine they’re using and we had no idea, so it’s it’s. I suppose understanding that terminology and having that content included within your website and there’s a fine balance between having that content on a web page, but also having a web page that is tailored to convert. So it’s a bit of a balancing act because. Don’t wanna be and it wouldn’t work anyway because old-fashioned spamming keywords into your or suffering keywords into your web page and creating a poor user experience. For example, because even if you did get the traffic or people landing onto your website, then it’s not necessarily going to convert because again, it’s going to be a poor user experience. So coming back to your question, hopefully that. It touches on it, Kirsty.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It it does and and it’s that’s what I wanted to try and get to because one of the big things, you know, I’m really keen on this is sticking to your audience shoes and using the language that resonates with them instead of in industry terms because in industry terms are or the end user or or the decision makers type into Google. And they’re also very. Clearly, you know anyone who’s read my socials will hear me say use the same terminology in your socials. Your same terminology in your videos so you get that overarching understanding, which is why I deliberately planted that question cause hey, if that’s what I do. Cause hey, you know that I I. I’m obviously, you know, a host for a podcast, and sometimes it’s nice to have somebody on that understands where I’m coming from. As well, but. I wanna just touch on Jordan the person. Nick is. You didn’t just start doing a paper click, website design, search engine optimization. You. Have a fabulous back story which I’ve only just found out about, and I would never have known this unless somebody has told me. And then like we had our 1:00 to 1:00 and we’ll talk about one to ones in a minute and how important they are. But I’d like you to just explain where you come from. Because you didn’t start on websites, did you?

Jordan Farrar
Ohh not at all so. Yes, my background is military, so I served in the army for eight years. I joined in 2008 as an 18 year old. me and I left in 2016. So in I often get asked well, how the hell do you go from Army military to websites and digital marketing? I suppose the easiest answer is when I left I I took a job as you do. Because you need. To support the bills and and what not, but equally at the time, I didn’t really have an understanding of the direction I wanted to go into and I think that’s fair to say and. It comes back to being asked in school all those years ago. What do you want to be when you grow up? I was always the kid who didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. And I was, I suppose it’s fair to say I. I thought that that was a bad thing at the time because there are other children who knew what they want to be. I I wanna go down a lot. I can’t talk. I want to go down the doctor route. I want to go down. I want fathers, an electrician or whatever it might be. And so I I plugged the gap by jumping into the army. But as I left, I still. Wasn’t sure what I wanted to do or be. Etc. Etcetera. And and it was only recently that I realised, OK, well, I think I’m on the right path now with a coca. So when I left, I took a job and it was a it was a good job. It was covering half the country to a lot of driving, a lot of time away from. Home. Speaking to passing. Trade in various builders, merchants and it gave me a lot of time to. To listen to various audio books because there was a lot of driving involved. As I said, I was in the hotel two or three nights a week. So yeah, plenty of time to reflect on things and try to establish what I wanted to do. So that led us down to, I suppose. Trying to, I suppose at that point I still wasn’t sure I was still a little bit uncomfortable in life, so that led us down to exploring a few side hustles in terms of. Creating websites and and we were essentially buying products in from China. It’s the terms private label. So we were looking at the branding of the materials, creating products, manufacturing them overseas, getting a third party auditing company to go along, sign them off, make sure that they were up to our standards and requirements, handling the shipping. Bring them to the UK through customs, into an Amazon warehouse and we were essentially selling on the Amazon fulfilment by Amazon programme, which was good fun. It was a learning curve. And I suppose at that point in time that’s where you start picking up skills in terms of understanding what conversion rate optimization is, what keyword research is, what search engine optimization is. Because Amazon is a search engine in and of itself. And yes, that was going on in the background, I suppose. When you’re selling on Amazon, you quickly realise that if in terms of looking at or taking a step back and looking at the lifetime value of a customer. You realise if you can encourage them to buy directly from yourself on the next order, it’s going, there’s going to be more profit because it’s not on the Amazon platform. So that’s what got us into creating our own e-commerce stores. It’s driving traffic, learning, paid advertising, learning, search engine optimization and again going from there. So it was only when I was with my last company and really lovely, lovely people. And I think it’s fair to say they were. A little bit old school with their digital. Mindset, shall we say, and I was Privy to their website, so I was in a business development position. I knew how much had been invested into the website. I knew what the monthly recurring costs were for the website. And most importantly, I knew that the phone wasn’t ringing. Now, having done this whole Amazon. Website Stuff for however long I’d picked up a few things and I wasn’t by any means a guru at the time, but I figured ohh these guys have a a national provider. They’ve got hundreds and thousands of customers. And. And I could probably do a better job at this. Point. In time. So if these guys have this problem, there’s probably other companies out there that also have this problem. That’s led to me picking up the phone and calling a few companies. That happened to be with this supplier. We landed our first customer in 2019 and that was the proof of concept that I needed to decide. This is the route I want to go down. And from there I I transitioned I I started focusing on coca. I left the company in 2020 down to a part time job, working evenings and weekends with the plan to phase out and phase out the part time work and bring in new clients and grow my business. Obviously three months later we were in lockdown, so not the greatest. Coming in the world, but it’s. Yeah, it’s been a journey from there. So that’s how I sort of moved from 1 area to another if if that.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Absolutely. And of course now you not only have you got a cocoa running and it’s a family business you wanna touch on to, but you’ve also been the host of you’re the host of abbington business person. You’re earlier. I talked about one to ones and how we’ve had that. So I wonder. If you just talk about your role of networking, how important it is. A three-point. Question. And how you became the host of Abingdon Business bus and what business buzz is? Because I love it. I genuinely love the business. Buzz. But it’s much more interesting coming from you than it is for me just saying, oh, yeah, I really business first. So at home don’t have a list that just did that. Don’t know. But if you could just expand a little bit on that role.

Jordan Farrar
No, certainly. And so networking was new to me, I I say new to me. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, so I started networking in 2022. I’m I’m in Whitney, so I naturally I can’t remember how it came out. I think I received an invite from Emma Fisher on LinkedIn or something along those lines. So I thought I’d. Check it out. And and from there I I I prefer I pop to a few different ones. So business bars have come up to 50 different events up and down the country. It’s very informal networking, I would say. Essentially the format is 2 hours on the same day every single month. First hour is a case of popping in saying hello to everybody, informal chatting to those around the room and really getting an understanding of by different business owners and they’re. Common problems that you might be facing, success stories, etcetera, etcetera. There’s a short break in the middle at 11:00 where there’s any announcements, you have an opportunity. 7 seconds to say who you are, what you do and and that’s a really great element of it because it takes the pressure off almost in that you don’t have to be talking for 5-10 minutes, which a lot of again small businesses. More business owners don’t find very comfortable, but it equally gives you the opportunity to say again who you are and what you do. So that way if somebody says something that does perk your ears up, you can make a beeline to them afterwards. So the final hour is or 45 minutes or so is followed by more. Formal conversations with with those in the room, but yes, in in terms of how I ended up host at Abington, Buzz I. That was a good question. I’m not sure I attend a few around the county. I so again, I’m in Whitney. I do a 30 minute radius. So I I visit to McGregor and Jeff Nelson, they host well host stroke sponsor Chipping Norton. So I’m there frequently it’s. 30 minute drive from Whitney. Likewise with Vista. UM. Where else? We’ve got Whitney, obviously Oxford and then Abingdon. So those were the ones that were. On my sort. Of 30 minute radius that I can pop into. It’s very nice in that there’s no commitment, so you can pick it up and put it down as and when you when it’s suitable for you. So if you have a client meeting or something that you can’t move, then there’s no pressure to attend. And I ended up becoming ambassador for Abingdon, Burz at the back end of 2021, I think. Yeah. You know, 2020, sorry, 2022. I’m getting my dates confused. And ambassadors essentially just helping out the venue. So Mark Grayson, Howard Feather, were the previous hosts of having done. Got a really great relationship with both. Today and as opposed from there, it was just doing more of the same, unfortunately. Well, I say unfortunately. Fortunately, Howard was looking to step away. He’s working in Oxford Brookes University now doing some really exciting stuff. Which sort of left a role. Be filled if you like. And obviously, naturally being the ambassador. It. Sort of made it made sense to jump in and help out the regional leads in finding a new host. So that’s sort of how I ended up becoming host. It sort of fell into my lap, I guess is a is a fair way to say it.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And and you’re really good at it, you know. You are what? I really like is how you have taken it and you’ve changed it. You know, Mark and Howard are absolutely adorable, shouting out to you both. You’ve done. I know you did Mark’s website and I really like it. I love the classiness of it, so. You know big, big, big thumbs up there, but you’ve stepped into your own and and what’s really lovely is it’s a really nice balance of male and female and freedom, you know, non gender specific. It’s just really fluid, it’s non pressured and you know you go there and you just feel like I’m gonna have. And a quick catch up with my mates, which is what I normally do. Then you meet some new people and normally there’s some kind of really great conversation. Then you have this 7 seconds and I love the 2nd 7 seconds. Because you gotta be, really. Yeah, you really let’s only use this morning. Succinct. Well do. You gotta be really, really. Bang on it on what you wanna say and one of the things is, you know, I say don’t waste the time saying your name because some, some will ask that anyway. Just tell people what you do and.
Kirsty van den Bulk

Jordan Farrar
Take that one away from you, Kirsty. Because. I’m guilty of that so.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Yeah. If I think about it. If you’ve got 7 seconds, you’ve spent three seconds saying your name. You’ve only got 4 seconds to say what you do, so just say what you do and then finish off you.

Jordan Farrar
Yeah.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It’s a it’s a much more memorable. So yeah, that’s if you listen to me at the AT and never introduce myself. I will say no. You know what you say or how to say it. Connect to your audience. Something like that. And then I’ll go. I’m gonna come see me. So yeah. Still that one. And so it’s really interesting you’ve had this huge journey you’ve gone from.

Jordan Farrar
Makes sense?

Kirsty van den Bulk
Not knowing what you wanted to do into the army, and that’s quite normal. I was different. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but quite a few of the people who come on the podcast have no idea what they wanted to do when they were at school. And I think that’s quite normal. So hats off to you for your entire journey. But I wondered who’s inspired you. Along the way.

Jordan Farrar
Hmm.

Jordan Farrar
That’s a good question. It’s. I I’ve got no idea. So it’s it’s going to come down to my audio books. So again, having left the military, I I was, I felt like a bit of a tumbleweed. All I wanted to do was just, I don’t know, find a role that was happy and to support my lifestyle that I had, because while I was in the army we, we bought a house. I think I was based in Northern Ireland at the time. So I wanted to just come back to the the mainland and enjoy spending time with my family, etcetera, etcetera. But yes, my first role it was is driving a lot so it was covering the South of the of the UK, so a number of various books is is probably the best way to to put it. Downloaded a number of different audiobooks and would just listen to them to try and give me some shift in perspective, but in in terms of. Others, that’s. Others that I’ve learned from along the way, but no one per se. Who’s? Completely inspired me to do something different if if. That makes sense.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Yeah. No, absolutely. What about? Has there been any moments where you’ve gone? So I love aha moments. So I’ve had quite a few of these and that’s why I have a wonky career and I love my wonky career because it makes me who I am. So, have there been any moments where you have those horror moments where you’ve gone? Ohh, I shouldn’t have done that or. That was a really. Good decision and that made sense and I’ve learned so much from it or something. You’ve just gone. There, that was. Completely and utterly. I won’t say, actually. Well, absolute pants and I should. They should have moved on. From there, so is there. Anything that you’ve learned, you know, pivoted, that’s completely changed things.

Jordan Farrar
I think. Yeah, I suppose mindset is a big one, and that probably brings me back to my time in the army. As I said, I was a kid in school, didn’t really know what he, what direction he wanted to go. And when you’re going back in. I don’t know going back to basic training in in Catherick, North Yorkshire, for those who don’t know, you essentially get assigned to your platoon and you’ve got a section commander who’s responsible for turning you from a civilian into some semi functional soldier who. You you’re not quite there yet. You know the basics before you go off to battalion and you do your I don’t know your pre deployment training and you go on operational duties etcetera, etcetera. But at the time when you’re in basic training and you don’t know anything and you’re in a whirlwind of pain of learning, if you like this, the section commander is almost on a pedestal. And I think those without trying to cringe myself too much to those in the know who are equally veterans or those of my friends that still in it, it’s fair to say that they’re on a pedestal and it’s it’s like that it’s designed around that for a certain. But at the time when you’re a bad, when you’re a Rifleman, you’re not necessarily going to think that you can make it to there. It’s it’s a million miles away in terms of this guy, he knows absolutely everything about everything. He knows all this stuff. He’s he’s he’s on a pedestal. So I suppose for me, the.

Jordan Farrar
Helpful as as I progressed in my career, I I went through the promotional ranks, promotional courses I left after well after a few years of for a couple of years of being a section commander. So I got to that position in the end which. I suppose helped me in breaking down certain barriers or those self-imposed barriers, if that makes sense. And when you realise actually it’s just a case of putting 1 foot in front of another and I can do that too that that. Probably sets you up on it. Well, yeah, I think that’s fair. To say it sets. You up on a good path moving forward if you can keep that mindset.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Thank you for sharing that and something that we haven’t touched on is that you weren’t in the army, but you did actually go into a sector which is quite normal for people to go into from the army, which is the security industry. You did actually do a little bit in there and I know that we’ve got people like Haley who works that industry. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about your time. Working, I mean you were travelling on. The road. But actually what you did.

Jordan Farrar
Yeah, certainly. So my second role, which was the last one before I did this, I was a business development representative in the yeah electronic security industry. So I was responsible for sales and certain elements of the project management. For access control systems, CCTV intruder alarms all of that. Well, electronic security jazz for domestic and commercial clients.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And I thought it was fascinating cause until we’d gone and going back to that one to one that I met you having in bars and yeah, we’ve been getting on and known each other for two years and yet the one question we haven’t had the one conversation we hadn’t had until we had that one to one was that we both came from the security industry. And I think that’s what I want to explore a little bit is how important it is. That when you go networking, it’s great to go to the event, but it’s the after meetings that are really important. So I wonder if you talk more about the one to ones and and how much, how important they really.

Jordan Farrar
Ohh no, they’re. They’re certainly important, and I’m notoriously guilty of not having them sometimes because it took me two years to sit down with you and go, oh, actually, we’re the same where we’ve been in the same industry. We know some of the same people and whatnot. So I suppose as I said, Buzz Networking is a pretty laid back informal networking event. There’s not really any rules. Apart from one, is it one rule of the count as three? I’m not sure. I’ll have to check on that one.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Well, yeah.

Jordan Farrar
Exactly. So it’s the 321 rule and the. To to summarise it, it’s a case of having three or sorry, talking to three new people in the room because it’s quite easy to walk into a room. And no one likes interrupting conversations, and sometimes it’s a bit scary to, you know, talk to new people. So it’s quite easy to fall into the default position of ah, you know what? I spoke to them last month. I’m gonna go into where my comfort zone naturally takes me. So one of the rules is to speak to three new people to try. And I. Mean as good as it is? Fostering those relationships, those you already know, it’s also equally important to. Expand your network and meet new people. So yes, it’s a case of getting out of that comfort zone. The two is where we’re touching on. So one of the buzz rules is to have two, one to ones between that event and the next meeting. And yes, those are so important because as you as you know from attending Abington Buzz and various buzzes, it’s quite easy to get into a conversation with somebody. And just as you’re going, ah, you know what, this is really interesting. And you’re. In those that interesting depth of learning about each other, businesses and whatnot. Somebody else just hops into the conversation, which is completely fine, but you completely lose track of what you’re saying and you end up on a completely different conversation path. So what we’re all saying is to ensure you have those two 1:00 to 1:00 so that you can sit down, have a coffee, or even if it’s just a phone call or video meeting or whatever it is. So that you can really start. Getting getting an understanding of the other person fostering that relationship, and from there that tends to be where you get. So I suppose get an idea of how you can help them and how they can help you and all the wonders that come from networking.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And I love what you just said, how you can help them and how they can help you, because a lot of people go networking, thinking you’re selling and you’re not are you’re going to build relationships and but because of small business owners, sometimes you can be really lonely and networking gives you a team or it does for me anyway.

Jordan Farrar
Yeah. No, no, definitely that’s the. So that’s my primary reason as to why I did networking. So we well as of last year, my partner came aboard, so she jumped in in March. So we can officially say we’re a family owned. Business. But prior to that, it was just me. He had a bit of help with virtual assistants and whatnot, but in terms of running everything day-to-day, it was me and it’s quite easy to fall into. I don’t know, being a guy behind this computer is at his office in his house to fall into the realm of impostor syndrome and whatnot and self doubt. So what I really enjoyed about buzz. Working is that whole social aspect of it is going out, speaking to different businesses, business owners, your peers, if you like. Again, coming from a a social aspect in the military, I really enjoy that side of things. UM, so it it was a case of that was really great for my own mental health from getting me out of my own head and thinking actually, I’m. Just. Rather than a a genuine business, I’m a guy who’s sitting behind his computer creating websites for people. It it puts you out there into the real world and I think that for me. Was why I continued doing that working because I genuinely enjoyed building those relationships and and. Not we’ve been fortunate enough to win a fair bit of business through networking, but that’s more of whether what I see it is more of an icing on the cake rather than the main reason for doing it. If yeah, if that makes sense.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It does completely. I’m gonna quickly say. Haley sent us a message that I’ve been pondering going to my local bars. You have prodded me to get on with it. Yes, Haley, get on with it. Nice to meet you, Jordan. So that’s lovely. Now, this is where the tables get turned. And this is where I kind of shrink every week. Because you’ve been in the hot seat for 28 minutes. And you get to turn the tables and ask me a question. And of course I don’t know what it is. So off you go, OK.

Jordan Farrar
So I’ve got a couple wrote down cause I you you very kindly said I would be asking your question. I didn’t wanna be unprepared. So from all the conversations you’ve had on this podcast, what’s 1 unexpected trend or insights about digital marketing or on I can’t talk or online business growth that has surprised you the? Most.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So I think it’s the search engine optimization, it it, it has to be because when I started this journey and I go back to Jo Shaeraand say thank you very, very much. So Jo writes local websites for the security industry and a huge shout out to her. She was talking about marketing. Schools you have. To watch the episode because it is hysterical because we’re starting talking about balls at 9:30 in the morning, and now I’m doing it again. Thank you, Jeff. And so that’s the the search engine optimization is really important because getting that right and understanding your key messages, but turning it around and putting it into the. Can you’re you’re you’re putting into the customers hands so that the thing was, once I realised that, I’ve been getting it right. So I had been. Getting it right. Because I’ve worked in sales for over, yeah, 30 years and I’ve been a sales trainer. So I knew how to do it, but I didn’t realise I was doing it right. And then understanding how important your website is, and that anyone who knows or works with me knows, I will say your website is your department store. You’ve gotta get that right. Everything else should be pointing to you. Everything should be going to your website. Your website is your central dissemination point, and if you get your search engine optimization and your website correct. And let me correct, I mean working for you as a business so that that consumer journey and if you think back to pre COVID and you think back to events, you think back to when retail was really, really thriving and you think back to you know those big department stores moving things around for their end caps and their point of sale and their big promotions. And then you apply that to that principle to your website and your search engine optimization. Then you cascade it down into your socials, and that is the magic for me of digital marketing.

Jordan Farrar
That’s a banging answer. It’s like you knew what I was gonna ask, but because you. Didn’t.
Kirsty van den Bulk
No, I had no idea. But you asked me a question. It’s right at the heart of what I do you. Know. That’s why we’re talking. That’s why we became friends. That’s why the whole thing. Because for me, no, I don’t do websites.
Speaker
Yes, yes.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And I will help you design it. I know what works and I’m really good with working with web designers, but I work. I’ve kind of bridged the gap between the web designer and the customer and then well, you know it, we make magic right and just make magic. So thank you so much for your time. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I love that question at the end. Thank you Jordan for your time.

Jordan Farrar
No, you’re very welcome. Thank you ever so much for having me and. For the invite.