Join us as Rob Twells interviews Rob White, the global head of marketing at FNG.
In this episode, Rob shares his journey from drama school to marketing leadership, diving into the AI tools transforming his team's content creation and outreach efforts. He also recalls a spooky marketing event that went hilariously wrong—complete with Halloween decorations, a witch’s cauldron, and a guest appearance by… Uncle Fester?!
Brace yourself for a Room 301 like no other, where Rob unleashes his marketing pet peeves with a mix of humor and hard truths. You won't want to miss it!
Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast.
Disclaimer: These resources shared are based solely on the experiences of the guest, Rob White. This is not a sponsored segment or an endorsement.
Rob Twells (00:03)
Hi guys, Rob here from Room 301. Today I'm with Rob White, global marketing leader for a company called FNG based in Derby, which is local to me. Really great interview. Rob takes us through two really, really good tools, one of which is an AI tool, which is helping his team scale their content creation efforts. And he also takes us through not one, not two, but three pet peeves of his go straight into room 301. Over to the episode.
Rob Twells (00:38)
Rob, thank you for joining me, how are you?
Rob White (00:41)
Really well, thanks Rob, how are you?
Rob Twells (00:43)
Yeah, very well, thank you. Very well for a Thursday and the weather's turned a little bit. I don't think summer is a thing anymore, so…
Rob White (00:50)
I know. It's changed quite suddenly, hasn't it? It's gone from very, very warm to ridiculously cold in a week.
Rob Twells (00:53)
It has.
short summer this year, short summer. Well look, we'll jump straight into it. Very, very interested to get an introduction from you if you want to sort of tell the listeners, you know, what you do day to day, what your role is, who you're currently with from an employment point of view and we'll go from there.
Rob White (01:10)
Yeah, of course. So my name's Rob White. I'm the global head of marketing for a company called FNG, which stands for Fortitude Nixxer Global. We're a predominantly based IT channel business. So we work with a lot of very, very big organizations within the IT space, helping them with their IT requirements. And then we also have a separate side to our business, which is Fortitude MSP.
which is a local IT support company supporting businesses across Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, with all their IT requirements.
Rob Twells (01:46)
Nice. So your day to day, look after the marketing and the sales function, I believe. Is that right?
Rob White (01:51)
Yeah, so we've got Greg who's our Chief Sales Officer. So my job really is to look after our marketing and also some of our new business development. So yeah, just promoting FNG in a variety of different ways, both online and offline, reaching out to different audiences, one in the channel, and then also for local businesses who are looking for a new IT support provider.
Rob Twells (02:03)
Got you.
Awesome, that sounds good. And how long you been with FNG now?
Rob White (02:25)
So I've been with FNG for just over a year or so. But my background in marketing, I've been in marketing for around the past sort of 14, 15 years. didn't always start in marketing to be honest. I originally trained as an actor. So I went to drama school in Kent. you do, you do, yeah.
Rob Twells (02:39)
Nice.
Wow. I didn't know that. Learn something every day.
Rob White (02:54)
A lot of people don't know that I was also an understudy in the West End for a play which I can't share but it was a, I can tell you it was a horror play. So yeah, was seriously. I can tell you are fair, yeah, that's fine. If anybody wants to know that then I'll certainly be able to tell them. So I left the sort of acting.
Rob Twells (03:08)
You can tell me off air Rob.
Rob White (03:22)
role if you like and I moved into, well moved back up from London to Derby, which is obviously where I was born. And then I started off at an agency or marketing agency, telemarketing. So that was cold calling businesses offering them website design, SEO, pay per click. And this was back in the day where obviously Google algorithms were changing like Google Panda and things like that.
It was, it was very, very tedious to say the least very, very, high pressured to try and get businesses on board. which I was there for a, for a few years and I then sort of progressed progressing to a variety of other marketing roles. So working for a couple of other agencies, working within a few different other verticals as well. So starting off as a marketing executive,
just doing your typical day -to -day sort of social media posting, content creation, website updates, SEO, pay -per -click, things like that. But the thing with myself is I've never really, although I'm sort of part of the CIM, I've never sort of really had any sort of university training or anything like that. Everything that I've done, I've learnt myself and I've done sort of various different courses online.
but where I am to where I am now compared to where I was 14, 15 years ago is a million miles away. over that period of time, I've had to sort of juggle different roles and learn how to manage sort of internal marketing teams and, deal with external stakeholders and working with agencies similar to, to you guys as well, Rob and, but yeah, my, sort of role.
in marketing has evolved quite significantly from like I said that marketing executive going to marketing and and sales manager to head of marketing and now global head of marketing. So yeah, it's been a bit of a progression.
Rob Twells (05:31)
Yeah, no, it sounds good. And you mentioned that you're a million miles away from where you were 15 years ago and no, I suppose, formal training. I'm the same. I I studied software at university, which is not a marketing thing at all. It's building things and I wouldn't know where to start with that kind of stuff anymore. But I think marketing is about putting the reps in. The more you do it, the more you learn, the more you fail, which we'll talk about in a bit more detail in this podcast. But the more you fail, the more you learn from that, the better you get.
Clearly you've been on that journey in the last 15 years, which has led you to where you are now. So the first part of the podcast is what we call what's in your toolbox. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of software, although it can be, but I'm very interested in how marketing leaders such as yourself think about their work. You you're looking after, you've got various different responsibilities. It's quite high pressure at times. You're responsible for lead generation.
to drive the new business. And as you mentioned, Rob, you're also involved in the new business side of things as well. So there's a lot of things to look after, a lot of metrics to stay on top of. I'm really interested in what you use day to day to keep on top of that stuff.
Rob White (06:41)
Yeah, yes, it's a really, really good point. I think, especially when you're in a marketing and also you're kind of looking after business development and sales to some extent, I think the way you market has got to sort of evolve quite significantly. I mean, our sort of target market or demographics, if you like, they're not the typical sort of people or consumers. So we can't really reach them on platforms like.
Facebook or Tik Tok or Instagram all those sort of platforms. So we utilize LinkedIn very very heavily And we target people based on their skills their job role Where they're located the company that they're at I mean the channel businesses that we work with some of them are multi -billion dollar organizations So their sort of process for us to actually become on board and as a partner with those is is very very lengthy and to find the right person when
there's 15 plus or 150 ,000 staff within that business is very, very difficult sometimes. But we utilize or we started utilizing AI a lot more within our marketing efforts. So we use a piece of software called Snov.io, which is kind of like a LinkedIn scraper tool. So we can upload all the sort of different demographics and people that we do want to target within that tool.
That'll go away, search LinkedIn. And it'll come back with a whole load of like a list of people that we, that they think basically are our sort of perfect, perfect match. We can then export them into the platform and we've got a variety of different email sequences, drip campaign setup. So we might have a drip campaign set up for an IT manager or an IT procurement lead at one of these big organizations and
Rob Twells (08:32)
on.
Rob White (08:35)
We'll have steps in place to say day one, send them an email introducing us, who we are, what we do. Three days later, it might be a case of another sequence runs where it's an automatic profile view of their LinkedIn profile. So, and then like three, four days later, they'll get another email. Five days later, they'll get another one. And that works really, really well for us. You know as well as I do, Rob, it's never a case of
Rob Twells (08:52)
Not you, yeah.
Rob White (09:05)
within marketing that you reach out to somebody once and they get in touch with you. It takes a variety of different touch points and steps to get people to consider you.
Rob Twells (09:19)
So you add in value at each step of that sequence or are you trying to sell to them or is it just about starting that relationship, getting a reply?
Rob White (09:27)
It's a little bit of all of them to be honest. I think that no matter what you do, because they get approached from companies like us probably day in, day out, we've got to make ourselves unique and we've got to try and make ourselves a little bit different. we know the areas that we be sort of excelling in the services that we do. So we focus on putting those messages out and within the emails, we try and focus on building that relationship, building that rapport.
Rob Twells (09:36)
Of course,
Rob White (09:56)
So we look at obviously things like what the company's putting out on LinkedIn and we utilize that within the marketing efforts as well. So if it's something like they've celebrated an anniversary or they've recently invested in a new piece of kit as an example, then we'll utilize that and say, we've noticed that you've seen that you've invested in this piece of particular equipment. Just so you know, we've got all of these different capabilities globally.
when it's convenient for a chat just to explore what we could potentially do to work together. But nine times out of 10, we do get some really good responses from people off the back of that. A lot of meetings booked and the meetings that we do hold with those companies are very, very productive. We've got a lot of different USPs that we offer compared to our competition internally.
But again, without sort of bombarding people with those emails and saying, we do this, we do that, we do that, we do that, it's a case where we're trying to build that relationship, have a call with us, understand where we can potentially support you. And a lot of people, like I said, really like that. So that's one piece of software that we utilize.
Rob Twells (11:11)
What does the site was a cycle length of that so I? imagine you have to correct me if I'm wrong but From the first time you reach out Could be 18 months before this pounds in your back pocket so to speak
Rob White (11:26)
100 % yeah. I mean to give you an example we work with again a very very large company in the channel. It took us nearly seven eight months to even become on boarded with them. That was multiple meetings going out and seeing them face to face. They're based down in London so obviously you've got a lot of expense to do that without even getting them on board as a customer. So there is quite a lot of risk in doing that as well.
Rob Twells (11:38)
Yeah.
Rob White (11:56)
But yeah, like you say, obviously from where that sort of journey starts to where we are now, we're working with them, they're seeing the benefits of what we do. But on the sort of flip side to that, it's more of like a business development tool that we use. From a marketing point of view, one tool that I've started using over the past eight months or so is, again, from an AI point of view, is a tool called Writesonic
So that helps us with our sort of content creation. So we do a lot of blog article creation, especially around our wireless survey capabilities in the countries that we can, we have that sort of coverage in. So we've utilized WriteSonic, we've added our own sort of like voice profile and things like that, the way that we want our content written. And some of those blog articles are ranking first globally for different key phrases.
Rob Twells (12:48)
Nice.
Rob White (12:54)
And that's generated as new leads, new inquiries from our website. So that's a really, really powerful tool for us that one.
Rob Twells (13:01)
How do you ensure that obviously there'll be copywriters quaking in their boots hearing that. How do you ensure that the article that it gives you does have a human element and you're not going to get penalised going forward? Because I know there's a lot of, you know, people are just doing AI articles at scale now and they are starting to get penalised because they haven't done the follow through. They haven't gone through it after the fact and put that human element to it, which I presume you do that.
Rob White (13:31)
Yeah. It's never a case with us where we just take that AI and publish that. A lot of obviously the AI tools have still got things like American, American isms, American. It's a case of obviously going through looking at those. But we would tend to use it more, more of a starting point than anything, because it's great that this tool has or can can utilize a sort of layout to some extent. But then
Rob Twells (13:35)
Nothing much.
Absolutely, yes.
Okay.
Rob White (14:00)
If we're talking about a particular service that we offer like a wireless survey as an example, we've got a lot more knowledge that we can put into that article and a lot more sort of experience of that particular location where we can expand on what's been, what's been sort of generated for us. So we definitely take a look at absolutely everything that's been written. We kind of move things around in different places. We look at some of the content that's created. We've got
a couple of people that check all that sort of internally. But yeah, I think the thing with AI is it's still so unregulated, you've got to be so careful with the information that you even provide to that company. You don't want to sort of give them an awful lot about who you are, what you do, all that sort of stuff. But to actually give you a little bit of a kickstart or a little bit of a layout idea, it's…
Rob Twells (14:57)
100%. Yeah, and it really helps you do content at scale as well. And I think it's good to hear that you're still doing the process after it's done the work for you, because actually I think it's your unique perspective on the subject that you're writing about is a valuable thing. And that's probably what's helping you rank number one globally for some of these terms. That's excellent. So that was Writesonic. And what was the first one you mentioned, Rob?
Rob White (14:58)
It's invaluable.
It was Writesonic and Snov.io.
Rob Twells (15:23)
That's the one. Yeah. And you mentioned that it's a business development tool, but actually I think, you know, that is verging on sort of outbound sales, isn't it? But I think to do that correctly, there needs to be a really good blend of sales and marketing because the sales, the outbound sales does not work. And I know this from experience if the messaging isn't right and the messaging is going to come from marketing. So that's a really good way of getting the blend between the two right.
Rob White (15:37)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that tool is perfect for us because from, especially working in a B2B environment, the majority of email marketing software, it's very similar to like your typical MailChimp, all that sort of stuff. our audience don't engage with things like that. So it's got to be like, it's got to look like a normal sort of outlook email to some extent. And that's a really powerful system that we've sort of looked at and we've utilized and the capabilities that it's got is brilliant.
Rob Twells (15:54)
Mm.
Rob White (16:19)
But yeah, from an outbound point of view, like you say, it is very good for us.
Rob Twells (16:26)
No, that's excellent. And that's the best thing about doing this podcast. I get to nerd out on two new tools that I've not really become familiar with before this. So that is my next hour sorted after we finished recording Rob. So thank you for that. No, that's great. The next part of the podcast is talking about a failure. So I always think it's interesting to hear from marketing leaders, you know, a particular event that sticks in their mind in terms of something they royally
I don't want to swear but bodged up, shall we say. And really what they learned from that. so yeah, over to you. Talk to me about something that you've done that maybe didn't go quite to plan.
Rob White (17:04)
Yeah. there's always one that's stuck in my mind. Yeah. It's awful. so I used to work or used to be the, marketing manager for a car dealership in Derby. And one of the, I think you may do, but one of, one of the big ways that they sort of generated new business was holding, internal events.
Rob Twells (17:17)
I think I might know it all.
Rob White (17:31)
you probably, most people would have seen them. So it's like a VIP event. It goes out to all their database. Come and change your car. You'll get a great deal, all that sort of stuff. And no, you don't. But we held one of these events, but we decided to do it internally rather than working with an agency. So we decided to do something a little bit quirky and try and do like a Halloween event. So.
Rob Twells (17:58)
Right?
Rob White (17:59)
I love Halloween personally, it's probably my favourite.
Rob Twells (18:01)
Yeah, big fun. Big fun, like a horror movie. Yeah, all that good stuff.
Rob White (18:05)
Yeah, so we decided to do something a little bit different like that. we went to town, decorating the dealership up, putting black cloth up everywhere, making it a bit of like a spooky sort of atmosphere. We had like a massive witch's cauldron in the middle of the showroom with the smoke machine in, where people did a deal with us on the day they could go in this cauldron, pick out a prize. And that could be something from like a dash cam or free service, whatever that whatever.
But we tried it and yeah, it just went completely wrong. So we invited all of our sort of database of people that we wanted to target. We segmented them. So whose cars were coming up for renewal within the next sort of year or so. And we sent that out to about 13 ,000 people. yeah, about four people turned up.
Rob Twells (19:00)
Wow, I you.
wow.
Rob White (19:06)
Yeah, that was, that was something that I've never sort of, lived down. yeah, the, sort of onsite events and things like that, although they're, great to do internally. this is where sort of working with, with agencies, I think have, have a massive impact. because obviously people in my position and things like that, they're busy, they're dealing with teams, dealing with views that come up and stuff like that. It's never a case of.
You can allocate your full attention to a project always. And I think that was the sort of downfall and the stumbling block. Whereas the agency or the company that we worked with that did everything, they sent out all the mailers, they did all the designs, they decorated the showroom. So all we had to do basically was just sit back and kind of obviously take those appointments from people. And that was something that I think I over overestimated quite a lot.
Rob Twells (19:39)
No,
Rob White (20:06)
how much work actually went involved, was involved within that and how much we had to do internally. And I think there was a few things that personally I didn't do that kind of contributed to that failure of that event, which I can hold my hands up and say I've learned from that. But again, like I said, that's where sort of working with agencies like you guys are perfect. I I haven't got time to spend.
Rob Twells (20:23)
Yay.
Rob White (20:34)
all day every day looking at our social rankings or our SEO rankings or looking at new keywords or updating our pay -per -click campaigns. that's, think working with a marketing agency is invaluable for somebody in my position, especially looking at the goals and achievements and sort of the way that we want to grow as an organisation, putting that across to companies like you guys is fantastic because you guys can take all of that information on board.
you can come to me with a plan, I can say yes or no or look at changing things and things get done.
Rob Twells (21:10)
Yeah, absolutely. And also a third party perspective is always quite useful. And again, know, the risk of this turned into promoting agencies, we do have the benefit of seeing what's happening in other sectors, other industries, what's working well and sort of working out how we can transfer that to other businesses on our client roster as well. So yeah, lots of benefits to it for sure, for sure. And yeah, I think some clients of ours and
you know, moving on to your failure there is, well, how can we save a few grand here? we save a bit of money and still get the same output? It's very unlikely you will unless you are prepared to dedicate the right internal resource to it, which a lot of the time people aren't. They just try and sort of cut a few corners and get the same outcome. And it doesn't always work like that. So, well, live and learn, move on. Probably a very awkward evening for you, I think. Stood there in a…
Rob White (22:03)
and we're there.
Rob Twells (22:07)
Frankenstein outfit or something with four people surrounded you.
Rob White (22:10)
Yeah, what made it worse is I was actually dressed up as Uncle Fester. yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, stood there in the middle of a showroom looking like a complete idiot. There was guys bombarded you saying what's going on. No, no, no, it wasn't a nice experience or a nice position to be in, that's for sure.
Rob Twells (22:16)
That was close.
I
Yeah, I'm guessing you didn't sell a car that night, No.
There you go, you won't do it again. Right, the main event, Room 301. So for anyone that doesn't know, the name Room 301 came from what's called a 301 redirect in the sort of SEO world. Rob will know what I'm talking about. Hopefully you guys listening will as well. But that led us on to thinking about what we'd redirect out of the world from a marketing point of view, never to be seen again because it annoys us so much. So over to you, Rob. What are you putting in? What's your first pet peeve?
Rob White (23:07)
first peppy i've got three in total
Rob Twells (23:09)
Got three, so yeah, okay, good.
Rob White (23:11)
Yeah, I've had to do bit of thinking, but the first one that I'm pointing into this is new candidates when you're recruiting for a marketing position that are automatically social media experts.
Where's my head in? The amount of… yeah, the amount of… When we've recruited for marketing positions in the past and we've looked at CVs, because people have got a Facebook account or an Instagram or a TikTok account, it automatically makes them a social media professional. No, no it doesn't. No, it doesn't.
Rob Twells (23:34)
I like you've a bit of experience there Rob.
doesn't really matter.
Rob White (23:57)
And then when you question people and you invite them in for an interview and say well show me what you've done What what sort of content have you created what's been successful for you? well, I've just created a video about my dog How's that gonna?
Rob Twells (24:11)
So are these people people that have grown followings that have been able to grow a community or they just got a page?
Rob White (24:17)
They've just got a page nine times out of 10 or… No, no, just on the CV it's I've utilized social media, I've got these accounts, I know how to work social media for businesses. And yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. We've looked at…
Rob Twells (24:20)
So no Nook Nook Steph story attached to it.
No. So what do you look for in that role? What would you ideally see in that interview or on that CV?
Rob White (24:44)
think realistically, if anybody's going to go in for a marketing role, I like to see where they would like to grow. Although it's great to say that I've got this experience or I've done this or I've done that or I've done that. I always sort of, things that jump out of me is I'd like to learn SEO or I'd like to learn more about pay -per -click. Although I've got a little bit of an experience in utilizing those, I don't really have a huge amount of experience and it's an area that I'd like to grow.
Rob Twells (24:52)
Okay.
Rob White (25:13)
We like to think internally, not just in our sort of marketing team, but we like to kind of mentor our team and sort of push them to sort of new boundaries and things that they aren't necessarily comfortable with. Because coming out of that comfort zone is key for any sort of person really. But that's one of the main things that I ask a lot of our interviewees.
Rob Twells (25:21)
That's good.
Rob White (25:41)
What are you not comfortable with? Where are the areas that you do think you can grow? Although obviously getting that sort of experience or finding out where they can potentially excel is important. It's also finding out what you can do as a manager within a marketing position to help grow within the organization.
Rob Twells (26:02)
Alright, very specific as well. I was kind of hoping we'd get very specific examples of what might annoy you because I was worried we were going to get something very generic like AI.
Rob White (26:14)
yeah. No, you've got quite a few specific things with me. Number two is not having unsubscribe links in cold email approaches.
Rob Twells (26:18)
Okay, go. Talk to me number two.
And that's very timely of said that, because obviously you've mentioned that that's a big part of your strategy as well.
Rob White (26:34)
Very big part of our strategy. Obviously we have things like that. We adhere to GDPR regulations and all that sort of stuff. I don't know what it is, but over the past month or so, I've had so many cold email approaches where there's no unsubscribe link at the bottom of an email, it's email me back to say if you're not interested.
Rob Twells (26:55)
interesting.
Rob White (26:56)
No, I don't don't want to email you back. And then again, it's a drip campaign. I've not heard back from you. Are you interested in our services? There's nowhere for me to unsubscribe. And that's the whole point of GDPR. If it's a cold email approach, there should be an easy way for me not to get in touch with that person, for me to not hear from them again. But it's…
Rob Twells (27:14)
I'm going to guess you fall into some of these sequences yourself.
Rob White (27:19)
yeah, yeah, yeah. think most people within a marketing position do. I can imagine. Yeah, but it's even things like data lists. That's the big one at the moment. Do you want to buy data for all of these different things? Reply if you're not interested or reply if you're interested.
Rob Twells (27:24)
yeah, I get bombarded.
Win win for that.
Rob White (27:43)
No, well yeah, absolutely. But that's one that sort of infuriated me recently.
Rob Twells (27:46)
Yeah.
What are the legalities around that? I'm pretty sure that doesn't really fly from a legal point of view.
Rob White (27:56)
I don't know realistically you should give people that that option to unsubscribe well if they're saying email me to unsubscribe technically they are still adhering to that but still not giving you the option yourself so it's a bit of a bit of a bit of a mixed one that I think
Rob Twells (28:02)
Yeah.
But they're the ones that get deleted, put into spam. They're the ones that don't make it. And the likes of you guys who have managed to make this into a successful strategy for yourselves in terms of generating new business are the ones that are doing it properly. Because the ones that don't have the unsubscribe links and all that kind of stuff, again, it's not just that that's wrong with it. The messaging is normally terrible. The formatting of it is terrible. It's all terrible. It's probably sent from a Gmail domain. And everything about it is just not going to work.
There's a right way and wrong way and that's very, very wrong. Very wrong. Number three.
Rob White (28:49)
Very wrong.
Number three, you'll probably relate to this as well, Robert. It's unhelpful feedback from internal teams. Honestly, it drives me up the wall. There's nothing worse when you're asked to do a project from a marketing point of view. It's can you do this design or can you create this PowerPoint presentation around a particular subject? You sit down with the team who's asked for it and it's, yeah, it's good, but there's something missing.
Rob Twells (28:58)
Okay
Rob White (29:21)
What's missing? Give me some feedback. It's, yeah, just something that's not quite right. Well, yeah, that's helpful. Again, it's another thing that I think marketers are expected to get your crystal ball out and kind of cover absolutely everything that somebody wants without knowing what they want. yeah, that's.
Rob Twells (29:25)
Just something real.
Marketers are given an objective and expected to engineer completing that objective. No one cares how it's And typically they're given no budget to do it either. So there we go.
Rob White (29:59)
Yeah, you're right.
Rob Twells (30:03)
We want you to beat next year's figures, but we're only going to give you 75 % of the budget we gave you this year.
Rob White (30:09)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it could be, yeah.
Rob Twells (30:10)
I could be one couldn't it? Watch them as they ever grow the top line.
Rob White (30:17)
Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's definitely happened to me in other positions before. And when you work out realistically, I'm not sure if you agree with this, Rob, but I mean, personally, I think that anybody in a marketing position, their budget should be around sort of between five and 10 % of total revenue.
Rob Twells (30:18)
I'll you later.
Yeah.
Yeah, five and ten is a really good baseline, really good baseline, particularly in very, very small businesses, maybe turning over less than five million a year, something like that. And if you turn over more than five million, as long as your margin can cope with it, I think more than 10%, if truth be told.
Rob White (30:51)
Yeah. I mean, I was in a position where my marketing budget was less than 1 % of total revenue. And like you said, you're expected to grow the bottom line. You're expected to grow your sort of organic and pay -per -click results. And when you are kind of limited and sort of stripped back from that sort of realistic expectation that you put in a marketing plan, you've got to reevaluate things and you've got to sort of change things up and…
Rob Twells (30:56)
Ready?
Rob White (31:19)
And it is kind of getting a crystal ball out to some extent to think what is going to work well for us and where can I utilize this budget most effectively to try and deliver that return in investment. But then I do feel sorry for a lot of people in marketing positions because when they are given very, very small budgets and things like that, when the expectations to grow the marketing or the sales function is significant and you don't achieve that, that onus then falls back on you.
Rob Twells (31:48)
Yeah, absolutely. It's often a sign that the person in control of the budget just doesn't quite get it. So it should be very clear from a marketing point of view that you put X amount of pounds in and you get X amount of pounds out to the point where it becomes a no brainer to put more budget in place. So they clearly haven't had those sorts of figures put in front of them or other areas of the business have maybe too high overheads that therefore put the marketing function under more pressure. So
Yeah, it's difficult. If you're in a business that doesn't respect marketing or, you know, just doesn't simply have the money to do it, it's very, very difficult. And as you say, the problem, or should I say the solution always lies with more leads or more sales, always. And that starts with marketing. It makes our job very, very difficult. But on the other hand, to play devil's advocate, if you get into a good business, it does respect it, you can have a huge impact and you really enjoy your position, which is clearly where you're at, Rob.
Rob White (32:42)
Yeah.
Rob Twells (32:46)
There we go. We'll not really appreciate your time, Rob. I'm glad you've got three things for even three I want today. I couldn't agree more on all of them either. Great to hear about your toolbox. We'll drop the two tools that you mentioned into the show notes as well. How can people hear more about you and FNG?
Rob White (33:04)
So I'm available on LinkedIn. If listeners are based in Derby or the East Midlands, they can come over, they can come and have a chat to us, or I said you can message on LinkedIn. I'm more than happy to sort of give any advice or answer any questions that anybody has, but yeah, I'm pretty approachable, even though I am very busy.
Rob Twells (33:26)
Always busy. Doesn't ever settle down, it? Well, look, appreciate your time, Rob. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you again soon.
Rob White (33:35)
Thanks, Rob.
Rob Twells
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Rob is the Founder of an award winning digital agency (since forming a digital agency group The Digital Maze with Boom Online) specialising in 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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