This week on Room 301, Emma Glover, founder of Victress Digital, joins Rob Twells for a no-nonsense look at social media marketing in the B2B world.
Emma talks about her journey from agency life to launching her own business, sharing why she believes in the power of whiteboards, handwritten lists, and keeping things simple for clients. They dig into the reality of balancing traditional strategies with new tools, why Em’s “don't be a yes man” approach has been a game-changer, and the pitfalls of overcomplicating lead gen and user experience.
It's time to step into Room 301...
Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast.
Disclaimer: These resources shared are based solely on the experiences of the podcast guest. This is not a sponsored segment or an endorsement.
Rob Twells (00:02)
Okay, welcome back. I am pleased to be joined by Emma Glover this week. Emma, how are you?
Em Glover (00:09)
Good, thank you, how are you?
Rob Twells (00:10)
Very well, thank you for joining us. So quickly, happy to introduce yourself, a bit about your company and your background.
Em Glover (00:18)
course yeah so I'm I run Victress Digital, we are a small social media specialist agency based in Nottingham and we usually work with SAS or B2B brands and we've been around for six years this month.
Rob Twells (00:33)
Excellent, six years! Wowza. I seem to remember the LinkedIn post where you announced creating the business for some reason. That seems like only yesterday, to be honest.
Em Glover (00:42)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's six years in November, it's crazy times come very fast. And obviously most of that was like through COVID times.
Rob Twells (00:46)
Awesome.
COVID, yeah, the C word, we don't like to, so what's the background? you got agency background? Are you more in-house?
Em Glover (00:59)
Yeah, majority agency background. I started in house in education. So I worked in schools, both state schools and private schools. And then I worked agency side. I used to live and work in South Africa. So I worked for a couple of agencies over there. Moved back to Nottingham in 2017. Worked for two more local agencies and then started my own.
majority agency background I would say.
Rob Twells (01:31)
Excellent. So it feels like you've kind of been there and done it all really at this point. And now you're in there in the hot seat. Well, look, for anybody that hasn't listened, hopefully everybody has, we kind of asked three core questions on this podcast. So one of them is what is in your toolbox? One of them is what is a funny failure? And then finally, what grinds our gears about marketing? What are we going to put in Room 301? So we're to kick off with what's in your toolbox. Now this is not necessarily, although it can be a tool.
Em Glover (01:37)
Yeah.
Rob Twells (02:01)
piece of software that you use every day to help manage your workload, your team. We're all busy running businesses or marketing teams. It could be a way of thinking. It could even be a methodology, a book, whatever it is over to you. What's in your toolbox? What's helped you manage your schedule in your busy working life?
Em Glover (02:07)
Yeah.
I think because obviously most of what we do is online, I'm still a massive fan of writing actual lists. the wall behind me, yeah, but also the wall behind me, I've turned into a giant whiteboard. So I do scribble a lot of stuff. So I bought whiteboard, like sticky back wallpaper, essentially. So the whole wall in my office is whiteboard. I do write everything down.
Rob Twells (02:29)
Good old pen and paper.
Yeah?
Em Glover (02:49)
and I'm a sucker for a list. So yeah, I do like to tick things off. So as much as I do use like tools, we are a big fan of Trello at Victress, so we use Trello a lot. And I'm actually a huge fan of a good spreadsheet, if I'm honest. Big, big fan. So yeah, anything spreadsheet related, anything list related, I'm your girl, but.
Rob Twells (02:52)
Love it.
Em Glover (03:17)
I'm not a massive fan of using too many tools. Sometimes we work with clients who have lots of different tools and systems in place. They might have a Trello and Asana and a spreadsheets and other stuff like that. It can become really, really hard to mitigate properly. So we try to streamline our processes as much as we can. So Trello works really well for us internally. And then personally, I like to be able to tick things off and highlight things.
Rob Twells (03:21)
Good.
Yeah.
Em Glover (03:47)
So I've
Rob Twells (03:47)
Yeah, do you find it going in more if you write it down with a pen?
Em Glover (03:50)
Yeah, 100 % and I will also write things down that I've already done just so can take them off. Guilty.
Rob Twells (03:52)
Yeah.
retrospectively do your, I've heard that before, like do a done list and a to do list. It makes you feel a whole lot better at the end of the day.
Em Glover (03:59)
Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. My friend bought me a weekly planner that I've just showed you and that's actually got things to do per day and then things to do per week and it's just pretty to look at so I use it more.
Rob Twells (04:17)
Yeah, I'm really interested in the whole make your room a whiteboard approach. So I feel like I walk into my room and would literally just be writing everywhere and it'd be quite scary and overwhelming to look at.
Em Glover (04:27)
Yeah, yeah, it's a bit like number 13 if you've ever seen that film where he like puts loads of, I can imagine it could get a bit wild, but it's really useful from a brainstorm a lot better writing things down than I do writing a document or like using anything like Google Docs related. Much better to brainstorm, get everything out, pen to paper. I'm a bit of a traditionalist in that sense.
Rob Twells (04:32)
I have seen that film, yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Em Glover (04:55)
it really just helped me to sort of get everything out. As well as to-do lists, it's more just brain dumping onto paper and then making some sentences out of it in the end.
Rob Twells (05:04)
Yeah. That's it. And what do you use as a business to manage products, client accounts, things like that? Is it Trello or do you use something more centralized?
Em Glover (05:15)
Yeah, so we do use Trello and Asana is the way that they like. We usually try to work with clients, but we try and adopt their way versus trying to give them our way. We work with a lot of agencies and clients that have systems in place already. So we've got a couple of clients on Slack that we talk to via that. I've got one great client that we have on WhatsApp.
But that's, that's what we try and keep on what's Yeah, just like, yeah. Other than that, think, tools wise, I would say that we've actually reduced down the volume between them and we try and do it with clients and making sure that everything's really tidied up. I am a fan of HubSpot and we do use it with clients for their, like the way that they've got their CRM set up. But yeah, tools wise.
Rob Twells (05:44)
Just Yeah, just one.
Em Glover (06:12)
pretty traditionist.
Rob Twells (06:13)
We've genuinely three weeks ago, we moved on to HubSpot. So I'm getting all into sequences and tasking up and getting a real proper outbound sales framework going on now. seem to remember a few years back you talking about account-based marketing at one of our old DRINK:// Digital Marketing events probably three or four years ago now. And I did kind of stick with me and four years later, finally getting around to it.
Em Glover (06:18)
I do like.
Yes.
nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. I definitely do like HubSpot and particularly if everything's set up well and everyone uses it efficiently. A couple of our clients use it, like you say, throughout the full team. So all the sales and leads go in there, but then also social media scheduling goes in there as well. So it is nice to have a central place. And that's what I mean about trying to streamline the tools to
be using them most effectively versus having yourself spread too thin across. Because I think there's so many different tools now, so many different AI platforms you can use, and it can get mega overwhelming that you think you've got to have, like, dip your toe in everything. And I know that my brain already has too many tabs open. I don't need probably too many literal tabs.
Rob Twells (07:16)
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah now I feel that.
I really feel that. I wasn't going to talk about AI, but you've mentioned it now, so I can't not talk about it. Any AI tools that you prefer? Any use cases you talk about?
Em Glover (07:44)
not massively. I think I'm a bit of a believer. Obviously there's a lot of people saying, is it going to come for our jobs and what's going to happen to our industry? And I think from my perspective, it was more just getting used to using it and being comfortable using it versus being resistant to it. Cause I think it'll only come for the jobs of the people that aren't open to trying it, I believe. so from our side, like we've
Rob Twells (08:01)
Yeah. Yeah.
Em Glover (08:13)
experimented with client social stuff using MidJourney So like it's an image tool, which has been quite effective for what they needed at the time. But it also comes with its limitations and like we know, and if you've ever seen the way that AI does hands, then you'll know we've still got a way to go in terms of body parts and pictures and that sort of stuff. But I definitely have used it previously, even just
Rob Twells (08:18)
Right? Yeah.
Em Glover (08:42)
using ChatGPT to like prompt it to get some ideas for like paid social campaigns but I do recognize its limitations and I'm not a massive adopter of it in the obviously like I say I'm quite traditional in the way that I work but I can see it does have its plus side so I'm open to learning I'm open to trying things out but I definitely learn better by trying things out myself so if I get
Rob Twells (08:47)
Hmm.
Yeah, no, I agree. That's our approach really is very, open to understand that actually it's going to get more and more sophisticated over the next 12 to 24 months. And actually, we need to be on that journey rather than fight against that journey. So that's our stance. And yeah, same as you, ChatGPT is pretty much my chosen tool. And I use it a lot of, you know, I'm not fantastic at copy. I'm not fantastic at writing emails.
Em Glover (09:26)
Yeah.
Rob Twells (09:37)
I'm quite dyslexic, I use it to of sense check that or rewrite stuff or add a different angle. works really well. Okay. Cool.
Em Glover (09:43)
Yeah, I recently, I was at my grandma's house and she'd had some notes from the hospital which were all in like abbreviations and she was waiting for a call from the doctor and it was getting pushed out and pushed out by weeks. So I uploaded the notes from the hospital letter and said to ChatGPT you tell me what these abbreviations stand for and roughly what they mean? And it broke it down like line by line.
Rob Twells (09:55)
Okay.
Em Glover (10:11)
I said to her, I don't know if this is right, but like, this is what it's saying. And then she had a call and they said that it was exactly what it said. And luckily it wasn't saying anything too bad because I wouldn't have been like, and it says that it's going to be fatal and you've got two days to… Yeah, it was really like fascinating, but it was really fun to actually show her that as well and say like, this is a tool that exists and this is what happens. So yeah, it good.
Rob Twells (10:17)
Really?
Yeah, yeah, it's not looking good.
Yeah.
My best use case, and this might be something that interests you, is so I transcribe most of my calls using something called Otter. So it just joins my Zoom. Yeah, it just joins my Zoom calls, but I have something now where it takes the transcription, runs it through ChatGPT, especially if you're doing a sales call, it will take the transcription and create it into a brief that I can just fire into the Slack channel for the team to view. That's a process that used to take me
Em Glover (10:46)
I like butter. Yeah.
Rob Twells (11:06)
maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half sometimes, jump in a sales call, brief the team in on this new opportunity. But that brief would take me an hour to make it detailed to the point where the team would buy into it and understand it and not have any further questions. But I've got the prompt just right now where it takes transcription, generates the brief, stick it in the Slack channel. It's done in five minutes and it's just perfect. And that's been a game changer for me. So it does have its place. Get yourself on Otter. That's your toolbox!
Em Glover (11:30)
Yeah, that's good.
Rob Twells (11:35)
The second part is a failure bonus points if it's funny So talk to me about the times you've you've bodged up.
Em Glover (11:47)
think I've probably messed up loads in my career but I honestly think that this part of my brain is like goes into self-defense mode and protects it and just says don't like remember all these embarrassing things you did once. I think I would say a kind of well it is probably a big failure is many many years ago I went for a job that I probably wasn't really qualified to do.
And I probably had not enough experience to maybe have done that, but I was so desperate to work for that company that I just said that I could do all the things that I could do. And I just remember on the first day, they were very much like, right, well, hit the ground running. You promised us a lot in the interview. And I was like, right, okay, let's do this. Let's do this. And then, yeah, just drastically panicking in my head thinking, how am I going to explain that I actually am not as experienced as I proclaimed I was.
Rob Twells (12:29)
Yeah, you go.
Em Glover (12:43)
So I think that really has taught me and particularly now in my own business where I can't really hide behind anything anymore. But I think it's been really, really important for me. And something that I say a lot to the team is like, we have to be authentic. Like I know what we're good at. There's tons of agencies out there now. And I say a lot about maybe what clients shouldn't do more than what they should. And
Rob Twells (13:04)
Hmm.
Em Glover (13:09)
really I'm the first to my hand up and say if I'm not very good at something or we're not experienced to do something and I think that mild panic I had at my desk like some 10 years ago was probably the catalyst for that.
Rob Twells (13:23)
Well, I always, the reason I wanted this in the podcast is because every failure comes with some sort of learning curve, doesn't it? So do you find yourself being more selective over the people you work with more recently or?
Em Glover (13:30)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'd say so. think we're, I would say this year has been very much a year for authenticity for me in general. Just both personally and professionally. And I found that we have better team and work satisfaction if we're working on projects that we know we can deliver a really great high level of service. And I think when you first starting out, or I obviously started out as a freelancer, I was…
saying yes to everything because I just wanted to grow. wanted to, and not necessarily yes to things that I wasn't experienced to do, but maybe things that came with massive red flags that I was ignoring and thinking it will be fine because I need the money, I need the revenue, I'm worried about being self-employed, I'll just say yes, or the client wasn't particularly very nice to me maybe and I'm, it's fine because you just need to bring them cash in, but.
I think nowadays I'm more selective because I know what we can offer and I know the level of service we offer. But also because I think people respect authenticity and integrity more. I think one of our Google reviews says that I am the opposite of a "yes man". And I think a lot of people might read that and say like, does that come with kind of a, I don't know, confrontational or is she like really firm? But
Rob Twells (14:47)
Hmm.
Em Glover (15:02)
I'd rather sit and have a really honest, tough conversation with a client and say, look, here's where you're going wrong and here's where you're struggling with and we can help fix this together, but this is the situation that you're in. Because I do have meetings with clients a lot or prospects a lot where they're with a current agency and they'll say, well, when we first started working with them, they promised we would get to X, Y, Z position and we haven't or…
They promised that we'd get this result and we're not there yet. And I'm the sort of first person to say like, we can't promise results. We don't know what the market's going to be like. So yeah, I would say nowadays I'm definitely more, I'm okay with saying no than I used to be.
Rob Twells (15:38)
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, I think that's really good because for me, you know, the agencies that can get paid for their perspective, their opinion, their experience, their strategic advice are going to do far better than the ones that nod their head and just do do stuff. You know, doing this stuff, I don't I mean, it's in greatest respect because I know it's difficult. I know it's challenging, but doing this stuff is the easy bit. You know, it's actually what
Em Glover (16:09)
Yeah.
Rob Twells (16:18)
thinking of what stuff to do and why and the reasons for that in connection to the commercial objectives. That's the hard bit. That's a bit where you add the value. And I think by saying no, disagreeing, it's not confrontational, it's consultative. It's offering your perspective based on what you know and what you're clearly very good at.
Em Glover (16:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd rather have a tough conversation with anyone any day than shy away from that. then six months down the line, we've got to a position where I may be knew in my heart of hearts. In the beginning, it wasn't going to work, but I was too afraid to say anything. Whereas now I'd rather sort of lay that out and work with clients very closely to to fix the issues. I'm not about to deliver some, like, scary news to you and then say, but this is your problem. Like to me, it is our problem that we're going to work on.
Rob Twells (16:39)
Hmm.
Yeah.
It's that appropriate.
Em Glover (17:06)
But I do think that the difficult conversations I'm way more comfortable nowadays to have than I maybe would have been six years ago.
Rob Twells (17:14)
Yeah, and that comes with experience as well, especially in a more senior position, know, having a difficult conversation is not easy, but once you've done one or two, you actually feel quite good coming off the back of it because actually you may have butted heads a little bit, but you feel like you've got the leverage in that situation. You feel like your perspective has been valued and respected. So, no, I think that's the natural course of anybody who's, you know, getting better in their career and moving up. So,
Em Glover (17:27)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Rob Twells (17:44)
But certainly not least, and you've probably got more than one example of this, I'm going to guess, given the number of years you've been at this game. So Room 301, for anybody that doesn't know, 301 in SEO terms is 301 redirecting something permanently. So what we want to do is create a Room 301 where we get rid of anything from marketing that we don't want to see again, a pet peeve of ours, never to be seen again, hypothetically. So what grinds your gears? What don't you like?
Em Glover (17:50)
Thank
For me, it's either overly complicated, like forms on lead gen websites, or is a huge one for me. And it usually comes with a lot of like bias from a sales team. So if we suggested to reduce down like form fields in a form.
then the lead is therefore not qualified because they've not given all the information that a sales team needs to like process it. Obviously we work a lot with SaaS and B2B lead gen. So for me, forms are everything, just the way that people set out. I've seen forms recently where instead of country, they've got like country code abbreviation. And I spent a good like, I probably spent five minutes looking for like UK and going through all different ones and then
Rob Twells (18:48)
Hmm.
Why?
Em Glover (19:08)
realised that I was looking for GBR as in Great Britain, like I would never, okay. I'm thinking well how many people have we lost to like trying to basically put them through some sort of crystal maze type experience where they've got to jump through hoops and realistically at that point you've lost them. Like most people who want to check out your tool or whatever you want to make that process as simple as possible.
Rob Twells (19:12)
Didn't even know that.
No, I would have put UK, right?
Em Glover (19:37)
And I do think forms are everything in lead gen and people get them so wrong. And if I could do anything, it would be simplifying the process. And even if that lead comes through and it's not instantly qualified, it needs a bit of warming up. Just having a really good email nurture campaign in the back that can actually work that is fine. Like I'm not saying that something's gonna be ready for the sales team to jump in.
Rob Twells (19:59)
Yeah, exactly.
Em Glover (20:06)
But yeah, I would say a lot of the time it would be that or I would say…
changing campaigns in a panicked way without strategy, if that's a big conversation. But I definitely see that happen quite a lot as well. Particularly as we know, like we're heading towards Christmas and if you are in a lead-gen service-based business, you're probably trying to make a last-ditch attempt to get some revenue through the door before the end of the year. But if things have been working, then a lot of the time…
Whatever results you're getting now is probably from 12, 18 months worth of work behind the scenes. It's not really going to necessarily be that drastically different if we turn everything on its head three weeks before Christmas. So I do think that a lot of the time I see some successful campaigns that would continue to be successful if they were left to do their own thing.
Rob Twells (20:47)
Okay.
No.
Yeah, no, I agree. And I'm going to unpack the form thing from everyone, because that's something that winds me up as well, because I'm a big believer that not always, but most of the time, shorter the better. Get the basics, get the fundamental information, let the sales team or the nurturing sequence do the work after. Don't be lazy. But SaaS, we don't work that much in SaaS, but I use a lot of SaaS. I've noticed that just to get a demo,
Em Glover (21:11)
Yeah, do it. Do it.
Yep.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Rob Twells (21:37)
like they want to my cat's name, when my dog was born. What's your, what's your biggest silver bullet for forms?
Em Glover (21:39)
Yeah, yeah.
I guess I actually know quite a lot about this because we got through the process recently of looking for a social media tool internally as a business. And I think going through the process as a customer has been really interesting to me. So trying to sign up for stuff. and I guess the main issues that we see with forms as a, as a potential customer, as I saw was
They want as much information as they want because they want to be able to pre-qualify you before a call. But the issues that lie is a lot of the bias that comes with a pre-qualification process. So as an example, I was looking at a tool that was going to be majority funded by a client. It was something that the client had asked us to look for. So we'd said, yes, we can do it, but it's going to be quite pricey per year. They wanted it for social listening. We were fine to take that.
I could tell from the process that they had looked at my company that I'd signed up with and made a decision based on Companies House information that we couldn't afford the tool So I got a response back that basically pretty much said, this is going to be too expensive. And just to let you know, our prices start at this. We understand as a small business, probably… And it was really shocking that there was sort of like this pre…
bias about what had happened and I do think that's what happens a lot with forms. So in by trying to ask for all this information, it's then so a sales team, like you say, don't necessarily have to do tons of work to like pre-qualify because it's already been pre-qualified. But yeah, I think from my perspective, keeping forms as short as possible and understanding that the next process is what determines whether a lead is good or not.
Example, exhibit A, a lot of people will sign up to demos and stuff with a non-work email. It doesn't mean they're not qualified as a lead. I see that all the time as well. So yeah, I think from my perspective, guess, forms being simple enough that you can contact them. But information like country, you would know from a country code of a number. So…
Rob Twells (23:54)
Yeah.
Yes
Em Glover (24:17)
reducing down the need for some of the fields is a sure way that you can get more success over complicating a form and not watching the data like heat mapping. How frustrated are people getting before they're even thinking, you know what, okay, actually I've filled in three fields and then I've realised that there's another page of six more and I'm done. And I think people don't necessarily look too much into that.
Rob Twells (24:31)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's a big conversion killer. And actually, form UX is something that I find really interesting because sometimes there is a need for a form to be slightly more extensive. And there is a right way and a wrong way to do that, know, staging a form visually showing how far you are through it, all that good stuff I could, you know, bore everyone to tears with. But yeah, it's super interesting. And that firmly goes into Room 301. Really appreciate your time.
Em Glover (24:45)
Huge. Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Rob Twells (25:12)
Thank you. know for anyone that doesn't know, she jumped on very short notice, probably 24 hours today and saved me. So very, very grateful. Where can everybody find out more about you and your agency?
Em Glover (25:16)
you
Yeah, so if you want to look at the agency, it's victressdigital.co.uk or we're on LinkedIn and I'm also on LinkedIn. I post a lot about business and personal stuff but also a lot about social media, in particular B2B social media. So yeah, follow me on there.
Rob Twells (25:43)
Excellent. Well, look, I appreciate your time. Thank you for joining us and thank you everyone for listening. We'll see you again soon.
Rob is the Founder of an award winning digital agency (since forming a digital agency group The Digital Maze with Boom Online) specialising in eCommerce, SEO, PPC, CRO, digital strategy and web design. With over 10+ years in the marketing space, Rob has been involved with hundreds of marketing projects and campaigns with some of the best known brands.
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