E88: John Readman

Richard Hill:
Hi there I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One, welcome to our 88th episode. In this episode, I speak with John Readman, founder of BOSCO and Modo25. John's been in the eCommerce and Internet space since the mid 90s, and now heads up the teams at Modo25 and BOSCO. John worked in digital marketing many years and now helps companies with their in-house marketing teams training and helping companies directly with a host of training. In this episode we talk about some of the biggest mistakes he sees with his clients and how to avoid them, how to get out of the Google trap, and so, so much more. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill:
This episode is brought to you by eComOne, eCommerce Marketing Agency. eComOne works purely with eCommerce stores, scaling their Google shopping, SEO, Google search, and Facebook ads through a proven performance driven approach. Go to ecomone.com/resources for a host of amazing resources to grow your paid and organic channels.

Richard Hill:
How you doing John?

John Readman:
Very good. Thanks Richard. Thank you for having me on.

Richard Hill:
My pleasure. We have actually had a little chat before he came on and we are literally about an hour away, which makes a very... It's a big change to normal. We're normally darting around the globe, but an hour away, like you said, we could have done this one face to face and maybe if you do a good job, we'll get you on next time face to face.

John Readman:
Yeah, we'll do that. Well, there's a sort of incentive, and maybe we can go to the pub and share notes afterwards.

Richard Hill:
Oh, that'd be fantastic. So I know you've been in the e-com space, in eCommerce for a long time, in eCommerce years. So I think it'd be good to kick off with a bit of insight into how you got into the industry, what you've been doing over the years, and then obviously you've then set up Modo25. So I think it'd be good to sort of kick into that. And then I know you've also got the BOSCO, so if you bring all that in, give us that history and then talk about the two core things there.

John Readman:
Yeah. No, of course I will. Yeah. So I got involved in, I suppose digital and Internet, my first ever job after failing to get into the air force was in selling training on how to use the Internet.

Richard Hill:
Oh, okay.

John Readman:
Back in the mid 90s, and we used to have of the Internet for CEOs, it was a course we used to sell. That was our most popular course, it was like the introduction to Internet. So, after that I got into database marketing, and there's a company out there which many of your listeners will have definitely used, many of whom may even still use, and that was a company called Quick Address Systems, QAS. We used to have this postcode software where you type in a postcode and it'd bring back your address. At the time that was revolutionary, right? Some people are thinking, "Well, that's just normal." But I remember the first time I phoned up somewhere and I gave my postcode and they told me where I lived and I was like, "Wow, how did you do that?"

John Readman:
I used to sell that to everybody, it was all a time in materials, but it was also, that was the start of sort of eCommerce. I remember presenting to the board of a very large... Well, it was Debenhams, we presented the board of Debenhams on this postcode look up thing, and it could also help them find their nearest store. I remember the board at Debenhams at the time said, "Wow, I now know why the Internet exists. It's so people can type in their postcode and find our nearest shop so they can go and buy stuff." I was like, "No, that's not... People buy stuff on this as well."

John Readman:
But anyway, so I've been involved and all this. I went from the letter box doing mail software and database software into doing email software, and where we used to send out millions and millions of email marketing, and then into transactional email and then basket abandonment type stuff. Then through different type of industry events actually, through e-consultancy, I got into search marketing, so SEO and PPC. Helped a very good friend of mine grow a business in North Leeds, actually called Search Laboratory where we grew a small digital agency from six or seven of us above a Thai takeaway to hundreds of us over three, four years where we were then and doing digital marketing for like ASOS, House of [Phase 00:04:22], River Island, Superdry, and our whole thing was sort of global PPC and SEO.

John Readman:
Then roll forward to where we are now, after I've set up Modo25 two years ago now, so November before the pandemic, we set up the business proper with a friend of mine, who I actually met on a charity bike ride. So I'm doing this charity bike ride from London to Australia over 25 years where we do a chunk each year. We're in the process of raising money to fund an orphanage in Uganda. So we're taking kids off the street, giving them an education, clothing. And we were cycling... I got really to know him really well between Paris and Geneva. Anyway, become great mates, and he founded a business called Skyscanner and sold that business. Yeah, most people have used Skyscanner.

John Readman:
Anyway, we just became great mates and we were on one of our boys' holidays and I was explaining, I had this idea. I said, "Look, I want to help businesses in-house, their digital marketing over time. Having run agencies, I think our biggest fear is when someone phones up and goes, "I'm in-housing everything." You go, "Well, are you sure you want to do that?" So I think there's an opportunity to help people with some of the skill sets, learn how to do it themselves. Right. Because some of the skillset, maybe not all the strategy, maybe not all the high end stuff, but some of it, I think people want to in-house without [inaudible 00:05:54] PPC, SEO, etc."

John Readman:
So that became Modo25, where we help people over time if they want to learn how to in-house. And that could be anything from strategy through to recruitment, through to training, through to ongoing needs assessment, all that sort of stuff, bit of execution. So we do that and then in the back ground of that, I was telling Bon, I was like, "But I think the big opportunities, the problem with the world right now, is everything's a Google first world and we're all biased." I said, "It's a bit like in the 70s to 80s, nobody gets fired for buying IBM. Right. Nobody's getting fired for buying Google clicks. Okay. But actually is buying Google clicks the right thing to be doing?"

John Readman:
And I think it's actually got compounded and worse during the pandemic because suddenly everybody and anybody in any retail business thinks they're a digital marketing guru now because all their shops are closed. So we've got into this situation that maybe it it's Google first, maybe Facebook second, or whatever, I think Facebook have kicked themselves... Well not them, I think apple have kicked Facebook a bit recently with all of the tracking issues. And that's certainly a problem. But what I thought would be really neat is, could we create some software that's platform agnostic and independent to let and brands and everybody have a single view of, "Where should I spend my next pound or my next dollar?" So, "Where should I invest my next pound or dollar?"

John Readman:
So we set off on this journey two years ago, we've invested seven figures in building some tech. And I suppose what we're trying to do for people buying online media is what Skyscanner did for people buying flights, give them a real view of what the market is and give them an opportunity to predict where they should invest their money. So, that's what BOSCO is, and Modo25 is a digital marketing in-housing company. We're about 37 people and we've got clients all over the world who are using BOSCO now to predict where to spend their money.

Richard Hill:
Wow, that is one hell of an intro.

John Readman:
Sorry. I went on a bit. Well, I'm a Yorkshireman, I like to talk.

Richard Hill:
Oh yeah. We have a bit of the gig along here at times. So, excuse my warped sense of humour. So some great naming conventions there Modo25, BOSCO. How did the names-

John Readman:
Yeah, so the Modo25 bit is all linked to... So when Bon and I said, "Right, I think we're going to do this." And Bon was like, "Well, I'll put the money up. You've got to run the business." I said, "Right. Okay." I said, "But we still want to do..." Because we met on the charity bike ride. I said, "Well, I still want to do something for the kids in Uganda." And we were coming up with all these names, Richard, like certainty and probable and all these agency names that you hear many times. And I say, "Wow, that doesn't really get across our purpose of..." Like, we're going to make some money, but then we're going to use that money to do some good. Right. And we want that to be part of our business, and it's written into who we are.

John Readman:
So I said, "Well, why don't we name the business after one of the kids?" So one of the children at the orphanage is called Modo and the honest answer is we couldn't get modo.com. So the reason it's 25 is we met on the charity bike ride, ride 25. So Bon and I's connection is the 25 adventures from London to Sydney over 25 years. So we thought, "Well, it's got to be Modo25." And then we were building this piece of software and I was like, "Well, we've got to have it linked to charity." And BOSCO is the name of the man who runs the charity. So he provides the vision and direction and the future for Modo. So we were like, "Well, that's got to be the name of the software."

John Readman:
So it sits at the heart what we're doing. My long term vision, and we're going to get there is, at the moment we're helping create jobs and... Well we're helping to educate the kids and take them off the street. So there's this big slum in Jinja that we're trying to help eradicate through education. But actually the issue is we're educating these kids and then they're not getting a job. So wouldn't it be amazing if we could create a digital hub in Jinja and actually create jobs, everybody thinks I'm mad, right? They all think of crazy, but I've got this sort of plan and I think there's two folds. That it'd be a great opportunity to send young, smart people from the UK over to Uganda to help train and coach and it'd be great life experience for them, and it'd be great for the kids over there. And I think, I think it's doable, the time zone's not too well, but the first language English, they're all great at maths and their work ethic and attitude is really spot on. So I think it's got mileage, but everybody thinks I'm mad.

Richard Hill:
What a beautiful story. What a beautiful, yeah. I've heard of a few stories of how names have come about. That's great. That's really great. Thank you for sharing that with everybody. So let's have a little chat on e-com. So e-com, obviously our listeners all around the world, using multiple platforms and multiple channels, but do you have a specific channel that you screen about more than others in terms of, an eCommerce store, maybe they're in 10, 20 million pounds a year? I know it's quite a broad question, but are you sort of-

John Readman:
Oh no, I think the biggest channel they probably are using and chucking money at is probably Google shopping, and that's probably the right place. I think there's always areas of optimization within there doing it better, sorting out your feeds and I could... One of my previous businesses, I realized I was going on a little bit Richard, so I cut out a couple of moves of different business I've been running. But the last business before this is we wrote some feed management software called Product Caster, which is also a CSS tool. I think a lot of understanding your feed from your e-com store to populate all your ads in all your different places can save you huge amount of time, effort, optimization stuff, right? There's loads of opportunities there. But I think the biggest missed opportunity that I think, talking about people with 20 million quid turnover who are missing at the moment, is affiliates, right?

John Readman:
Affiliates, right. Everybody thinks affiliates is just cash back or discount codes and it's is a bit dirty and a bit grimy. However, I think you should call it partnerships or you should look at it with a different... There is huge opportunities to gain genuine incremental sales that you wouldn't have got all on a cost per acquisition basis. So it's relatively low risk. The problem is it's got a historical bad reputation and often because of that a lot of the agencies don't do it. So you have to deal directly with the network and then that's like, in my opinion, a bit like having the fox inside the hen house, because they're all running around and they just get maximum commission, so they're not going to check everything.

John Readman:
So anyway, I think affiliates done properly is the best opportunity. And especially coming up to say peak and black Friday and trading period around Christmas, that if someone's going to do something different for 2022 is if they should sort out their affiliates, or even just explore it. That would be my one channel if it was one.

Richard Hill:
No, great, great. It's not something we talk about too much to be fair, 85, 6 episodes, 88 episodes, I think actually, but when we go live. And affiliates, obviously you're not paying an affiliate until they've sold something, are you? Typically.

John Readman:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Obviously there different models, there'll be some set up fees and things like that, potentially. But ultimately, as long as you've got your percentages right, you've got the margins in the product, you've got an army of people out there. And as you say, I think that is a bit of a dirty word, isn't it? Affiliates, I think of Click Bank and things like when you start... Obviously that's not eCommerce specific, that's more information marketing.

John Readman:
Yeah. But you think people think Quidco or cashback sites or just discount codes and people then taking your codes and spamming it all over the Internet. Some of that does go on, but if it's a well managed program and... You're right though, you need to margin your products and everything else. But I also think a lot of eCommerce businesses that have grown have just relied on buying the traffic from PPC or Facebook, and have scaled their business that way. And they're sort of thinking, "Well, I don't want to pay for it twice." And they think that they... But actually, some of this will be incremental and it's extra, this is extra sales. Who doesn't want some extra sales?

Richard Hill:
Yeah. No, totally. So forecasting, I think is a good thing to talk about. So we're looking at affiliates. We talked about Google. We talked about shopping, which is obviously Google. Well, there's obviously other versions of shopping, but CSS you referred to and whatnot, obviously is Google specifically shopping or shopping ads as it's called, not Google shopping, technically it's shopping ads now isn't. Obviously you got all these channels, what's the best way to decide on... Sort of spend, when you're looking. Let's say, take this 20 million again, I know it's quite a broad question, but when you're trying to decide on what to spend, where is the obvious, I guess, factors and flags in the ground where you've got historical data to look at what's worked well, where the margins are potentially. But do you have like a formula that you focus on when you're looking at... When we're talking about BOSCO, is that what that does particularly?

John Readman:
Yeah. So, what I wanted to do was, in the past, so the last business I was involved with helping scale the business in whole called Summit, and we used to do a lot of the digital marketing for Argos and Argos were always saying, "Right, if we had more budget, where could we sell more stuff?" And we were like, "Oh, well, it's going to be... It's come up to the euros, it's going to be so many TVs. We're going to sell more big TVs ahead of the OS and we'll do some modelling and we'll try and predict... And then you need to spend some money on Google here." And then we built out some more programs around, "Oh, when the temperature changes by X your demand for paddling pools goes up. But when the temperature goes down, the demand for hot water bottles are..."

John Readman:
So we used to have data scientist after data scientist looking at all this stuff for Argos, and I was like, "This is really quite interesting, but ultimately what we're doing is helping people spend more money on Google, And actually is the answer here, where else could I be spending my money to achieve my objectives?" Whether my objective might be, how do I get the most valuable new clients? Which channels should I actually be investing in to get the highest volume of new clients or the most loyal clients or the highest customer lifetime price?

John Readman:
So I was very fortunate when I sort of had this idea. I put a notice on LinkedIn and just, "I'd set this business up." And this chap I used to work with, he was our previous head of data science at Summit who'd immigrated back, or gone home to Australia, so he was no longer working. So he said, "What are you up to? I'd love to work with you again." And I said, "Oh, I've got this question I want to answer, which is which channel should I investment my next pound in?" And he goes, "Oh, that's hard. Can you get the data?" And I go, "Well, I don't know."

John Readman:
So anyway, we went off on this journey. So to answer your question, this is exactly what we look at every day. And fundamentally, if you are a big agency and you are talking to someone like Vodafone, they'll love armies of econometric people and data scientists working all this out. But if you are, as you said, a 20 million turnover eCommerce business, you probably don't have three full-time data scientists sat there on the payroll working this out. And you probably do mostly of your digital marketing in-house, or you might have a freelancer or a relatively medium size agency, small to medium size agency. They probably don't have a full time data science team either.

John Readman:
So what we wanted to try and do was democratize all this high level data and thinking and give it that level of computing power and knowledge to everybody. So what BOSCO actually does do is if you put in your goals and your objectives of what you turn to achieve, it will give you this split of which pots you should spend it in. And it takes into account, not just the historical data of your performance, it will also predict based on your category and the demanding that category across all platforms, so Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest TikTok, all the different categories, and it will look at, "Right, based on the products you sell, based on what your acceptable cost of sale is, your acceptable ROAS or your acceptable cost of acquisition, and the budgets and everything else on your average order value. We think actually you should pull back in Google and you should take that money and spend it in Facebook or Snapchat or TikTok or whatever." What we're trying to do is get people to open their eyes and ask better questions.

Richard Hill:
Is that all on paid channels? Or do you look at like the-

John Readman:
Now, if I could forecast SEO, Richard, I wouldn't be sat here. So, but no, it is possible, so what we do... So most of the forecasting ability is on paid channels. And actually what we're trying to do is give people questions... To give business leaders questions to ask their team, or give agencies opportunities to be able to plan better, to help support their clients better. So I would say, in terms of how can you forecast and plan, it's an element of historical data. It's also about demand and it's also about opportunities. Where's the cheaper traffic, right. So which channels are the emerging... What's the new channel opportunity?

John Readman:
To go back to just the SEO question, I'm not swerving it. What we do do within our technology platform is we can see how are paying for certain keywords. We can also then see, "Well, what positions you ranked those keywords in organic." We can then do some cross-referencing scale, "Well, if you were position one in the top three, for those keywords, you could potentially reduce your reliance on paid and potentially get that traffic. So here's roughly the SEO opportunity, or roughly what you would be paying for those clicks if it was paid." And I think... Well, how long's a piece of string. But a lot of people versus what they spend on Google clicks under invest in SEO in my opinion.

Richard Hill:
Oh, 100%, and there's nothing better, I don't think, than forecasting SEO when it comes to... Quite often you'll get an SEO proposal from an agency, and we've been doing it we're in our 13th year, we've got two agencies here and the stories we hear, you're paying whatever it may be, five grand a month, and there's no data behind anything, there is no reporting on movements. But obviously what you can do right at the front end is you can forecast, you kind of look at what you said there, look at the keyword gaps, look at maybe the areas they're focused on, but then what are the opportunities maybe they are not even looking at which you can get that data from, search console, obviously out of GA where they might not even be focused on and see that actually there's a huge opportunity for growth. Obviously doing proper competitor analysis. There's obviously a lot of other tools out there as well.

John Readman:
Well, yeah. So what BOSCO does, and again this was sort of my obsession, is there's loads of really cool tools out there, Richard, that just do one or two things, but there isn't anything that looks at the whole picture. So we actually suck in a feed from [inaudible 00:21:33], SEO, Mars, the keyword tool, SpyFu the Keyword EO, all these multiple... But also search console, also all the different platform APIs. Mash all that data together and go, "Right, based on if you sell, I don't know, high end trainers to this demographic, but this is the size of your market, and this is where you are and this is where the competition... And this is, I suppose, if you want to win, you'd have to spend this much on paid. Actually, if you haven't got that much, here's the opportunity on the long term with an FCO."

John Readman:
And I think a lot of people get too into the detail and they don't look at the size of the prize. Actually, if we had really good solid technical SEO plan across the whole site, actually we could pick up loads of long term and the cumulative effect of all of that-

Richard Hill:
It's more than the-

John Readman:
It is more than being number one for this keyword. Right. But I also think, because it's not instant, I think one of the things that's happened, Richard, is people have got in obsessed with this instant hit of performance. Pay a pound, get my 10 pounds, pay a pound, get... So we're all fighting over the bottom end of that funnel and it's a bit like everybody's got on the Atkins diet and actually what we need to do is change our lifestyle and go to the gym. So PPC is a bit like the Atkins diet and SEO is like changing your lifestyle and going to the gym.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Bit more commitment's needed. Yeah.

John Readman:
Yeah, a bit more long term thinking rather than instant hit.

Richard Hill:
Love it. Right. So obviously you're working with a lot of brands. If you've got, 30 plus people in the house developing the tools, the software, and dealing with a lot of marketers and eCommerce stores. Now, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes you're seeing people are making with their marketing of their store? Where our listeners could maybe stop and have a think about those specifics. What do you see consistently where people are making mistakes?

John Readman:
Some of my clients might be listening. We better be careful. So I would say they're not moving into video fast enough and they're scared that video is expensive, they're scared that video needs some sort of high level production quality and they're really nervous that it... When they think video, they're thinking TV ads.

Richard Hill:
You're meaning video ads.

John Readman:
Well video ads and/or video creative, or as in social video content, user generated content. But I would say most audiences nowadays, video and moving images are more engaging. If you think now of the speed of the mobile web, it is no longer a problem to watch a video on your phone on 4 or 5G. That is barriers gone. Also, the video production quality of our phones and stuff is you can actually shoot almost... Well, an HD format video on your iPhone. So there's no reason to go out and invest tens of thousands of pounds in kit. Then linking that through to a sort of actionable insight of what people are... People are doing a poor job at video content, or I think that's the big crime is they're just not doing it because they think it's hard. Again, it's a great opportunity if you think, "Well, we've got skills shortage. We can't find people." Well, get intern who's straight out of college, who's really excited about video. Give them some decent direction, training, coaching, and set them loose and let them work on your clients or let them work within your team.

John Readman:
And we are seeing some amazing opportunities, BOSCO is actually predicting, "Well, if you moved your money into YouTube advertising, it's going to do this." Because the way we've consumed media now over lockdown has changed. In our house, there's four people in four different rooms looking at four different laptops, watching four different things. We do like each other though, but yeah. But the way we all consume the media, and that then means that the advertising strategy have had to change. So I'd say people are doing video content and video advertising poorly, but those who get it right can do exceptionally well.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think that's a great takeaway. I think very rarely, just as an example, we are looking at a new Google ad account probably every three or four days here, and you go straight to video ads and... Well, you don't because they're not there normally. They [crosstalk 00:26:10] know the account, but maybe [inaudible 00:26:13] dabble with display and obviously search and shopping in the Google accounts are very prevalent and huge spends and whatnot. Whereas video ads and videos as a whole, and then you obviously got that side of sort of your user generator, potentially user generated content for your social media, for your influencer side of things where you can obviously get your army of [inaudible 00:26:39] fans to work with them and they can create video, which then can be used for paid ads potentially as well.

John Readman:
That's just, if you can get really good quality user generated content and agree with the owner of that content that you can reuse it in return for, whatever, a free pair of shoes or whatever it is, then fantastic. Then it's people buy into that because it's like they're watching someone like themselves, sudden it's like, "Oh yeah, I'm like them, I'll buy those." So yeah, I'd say people should explore, in 2022, videos.

Richard Hill:
Let's say we've got people listening in and the right video ads, what would you say would be an initial test, budget they're going... What's a test? Not an amount of money, sorry. What would be a test that an e-com store could go and do you know if you want to go to Google?

John Readman:
I would look at Google and I'd look at YouTube ads and I'd look at a pre-roll and I'd look at potentially, it's really simple, go find your audience. So I let's take an instance of, if you are a bike shop and you sell bike and cycling equipment, for instance, in the winter we know that there's going to be loads of mid-age men in lycra, like me, sat on their turbo trainers, watching training videos.

Richard Hill:
There's a picture for you guys.

John Readman:
Give me two seconds, I'll come back in my lycra. But no, and they're sat stare... And what normally happens on your machine, you'll get retargeted through all the GDN stuff, I will get retargeted things that are either someone else on my computer's used or I've used, or whatever, but actually there's an opportunity to find your audience and test and target. So if like brands... So people are watching, I don't know, a GCN training video are likely to be interested in some bikes from my bike shop or some new cycling equipment or whatever. It's a logical fit. So your audience is good. The content's good and people aren't going to get offended by it. And actually, it'd be interesting to see, I don't know what the stats says, how many people are paying for the premium version of YouTube without the ads yet? I'd like to know that because I would say it's still low because the ads so far aren't offensive enough.

John Readman:
I'm nearly there with, and as a person in advertising I shouldn't say this, I'm nearly there with ITV because the experience on the ITV hub is terrible. It really annoys me all those ads. But again, going back to the YouTube situation, a pre-roll relatively easily shot ad, which you could probably put together in something, a combination of any of the Adobe suites and your mobile phone or even Canva or something, you don't have to invest in millions of pounds [crosstalk 00:29:27]. And I would say test that and a few thousand pounds with a really clear call to action, probably some sort of sale message. I wouldn't do it as a branding exercise, I'd do it on a specific product with a specific campaign, specific [crosstalk 00:29:43], real boom.

Richard Hill:
That's great. That's great advice. Right. So slight tangent then, attribution seems to be the very hot topic at the moment. Tell me what you think [crosstalk 00:29:55] on that. What should our listeners be thinking about?

John Readman:
Well, I think this is a friendly show, so I can sort of be a bit more... So attribution's a bit like teenage sex, Richard. Everybody's talking about it, but nobody's doing it. So it's one of those things that's talked about a lot, I think, but is very rarely executed and implemented properly. Fundamentally, I think there's two reasons for that. One reason is because actually it's quite hard to get the data together and get your head round, and I think that's now possible, so with systems like BOSCO, we have to organize all your data anyway. Right? So we have to get all your channels into one place, into a big Google cloud and we provide BOSCO for clients and for agencies, and that's a start of a sort of attribution journey.

John Readman:
But actually the bigger and harder discussion and issue is getting the board to agree that suddenly the budget and the value of this channel is now different. It's getting everybody to go, "Oh, so now that channel isn't getting this much budget, that's now going onto that channel." And if all the channels are owned by different people that's also an internal battle-

Richard Hill:
[crosstalk 00:31:15] within the business. Yeah.

John Readman:
Yeah. I would say it's easier to get attribution rolled out in a smaller company where the owner understands the metrics. And I think it's getting people to understand well... So what I would normally say is, if you're going to look at this is, let's look at a month's worth of data. Let's look at every single transaction. Let's look at how many steps there are. If the average is there's only two or three steps, it's probably not worth the effort. Right. If there's more than three, let's say up to seven, over that period, and you think, "Well, hang on, there's a load of data we can learn."

John Readman:
But the thing with attribution, I suppose, Richard, is they're all wrong. Every attribution model is fundamentally wrong. None of them have factually corrected or statistically correct. It's just, which one is least wrong and what's the best fit for my business. So what we normally would suggest or what the sort of things we talk about is, "Well, get a model of best fit and then run with it and see if actually your business does perform better." And actually an attribution model is better than no attribution model. Although you could argue that last click wins is still an attribution model, because at least you're measuring something, but I'd argue that's probably the worst version because you're going to miss out on the upper funnel.

John Readman:
I think where we're getting to now is particularly, sort of post pandemic time, is the costs on the platforms now... If everybody's just measuring last click, it's getting too expensive. You can't make it work because everybody's fighting over those clicks at the bottom of the funnel. The UK is one of the most fiercely competitive online marketplaces in the world. We've got high consumer confidence to buy online. We've got high [inaudible 00:33:00] to spend online. We've got huge competition, and we're a small island. So, that means the digital agencies have got to be good.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That is true. I think going back to the AdWords and attribution, I think how many accounts do you log into then, or I guess it's quite a lot, where it is probably first click or last click and they're not using sort of a linear or a...

John Readman:
Yeah. Some of they've tried some of the standard tests in Google Analytics and then Google goes in and gives it. So then the answer's often Google still wins. It's like, I think we're in this bias world whereas if you go to Google and say, "Where should I spend more money?" And Google and go, "Well, Google." If you go to Facebook, funnily enough, Facebook will say Facebook. And I also think it's difficult. I think also it's a bit like people go with what they know and I think often they're scared to change as well because it's been working.

John Readman:
Now it's quite a big number and if you're [inaudible 00:34:05] going to say, "What do you mean you're not going to give the credit to PPC anymore. It's going to move and it's going to go to display or it's going to go to SEO or it's going to go here. Well, how's that going to work?? And well, let's model it out. And I think the thing is, what you can do is, if you've got the data is model out, what would we have done differently if we had that? And how would the numbers look? It's difficult though, it's difficult getting your data organized, getting everybody to buy into it. That's the challenge.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's a tricky one and I'm sure we'll be talking about it for the next five years, but.

John Readman:
Yeah, it's only going to get harder because we'll have more channels, we'll have less cookies. We'll have a lot less data. So it's going to just get it harder.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, totally. So I think it'd be good to give us maybe a couple of examples of campaigns that you've worked on or your clients have worked on, obviously you've worked for your own... You obviously got a lot of clients now through the agency now and obviously worked at other agencies and whatnot and set them up, and you mentioned a few agencies there, [inaudible 00:35:04] Summit, large agencies in the retail space in the UK. But what would you say a couple of campaigns that you've been privy to, what was done? What was the outcome? Or any sort of insights you can give the listeners into some things that have worked really well, maybe obviously as recent as possible.

John Readman:
Yeah. So actually I can. Yeah. It's a shoe retailer. They are an active client of ours and they're in the process of in-housing and what we did with those guys, and I think this is often a missed opportunity if people have got a physical stores as well, is understanding the sort of local search. So there's two sides to this. So there's one which is actually advertising within Google maps. So someone types in shoe shop within Google maps, you can actually promote your local listing. A lot of people miss the opportunity to do that. So that's something, but then we also linked that back through towards their product inventory ads.

John Readman:
This is another data problem, right? How many pairs of shoes have you got in store versus online versus click and collect, right? For some businesses that's really hard to do, but then giving the opportunity to... So if you were search on a men's loafers Leeds, or men's brogues or whatever, and it goes... And again, this now gives you the opportunity to compete with Amazon because you can go, buy now, collect today on your way home because there's one available in store around the corner.

John Readman:
I do think if people have physical as well as a website, that ability to offer same day and compete with the Amazons of the world, I think... We've proved with this particular client with the click and collect is people then have a much better shopping experience, have the chance, if it's a clothing based thing, to try it on. So then returns are a lot easier. And then also upsell, cross sell, the staff in the store. All of that is a better experience. So I'd say that's a recent campaign and as the stores opened again, we were really onto that and helping this client understand how to execute that.

Richard Hill:
I mean, that's a great example there because I think local inventory ads, local ads, in the... Well, I say three pack, in their local maps and whatnot. Very rarely you see it very rarely you see it. Obviously it's specific for... We work with a retailer locally and they've got 228 stores, think it is, and we're doing a lot of new... They're sort of quite historically a physical store business, you know? And the web is definitely secondary for them, but the ability to take those inventories, those feeds, we talked about feeds and shopping earlier in the episode, but obviously those feeds from a local perspective, what's in that store, so you can reserve those products. Again, that's something I think is not used very often. I think-

John Readman:
Yeah, we built some specific software Summit for our Argos, which was, we had a feed from every single stores, 800 stores. And we had the feed from the website and we were like, if you search, these are some really boring facts, but Argos sell more dartboards than anybody else. Right? So, it's dartboards, right. So if you would to search dartboard and if there's one in the store in Lincoln available, it say buy now today in Lincoln, boom with the pin, off you go. And they refresh that feed every few minutes. And then funny enough, we go in Argos, you don't just pick up your dartboard, you might buy some batteries or you might buy something else. You might buy some else, it buy some darts or buy an okey.

Richard Hill:
I guess it's not too many cross sales with darts. So you got your darts, your flights, your okey.

John Readman:
Yeah. Lager.

Richard Hill:
I was say lager, to be fair. Yeah.

John Readman:
Yeah. I'm still surprised by the number of retailers who do have stores who don't do it, and that is a good opportunity for people.

Richard Hill:
Right. Great. I think, we do have a lot of listeners. We talk about shopping a lot, shopping feeds, CSS, shopping structure, different hybrid models around using smart, manual, and combinations. But I don't think we've actually mentioned inventory ads yet, after probably eight or nine episodes purely on the shoppers. That's a great one. That's great. So- Go on.

John Readman:
No, I was just going to say, if you are... Even if you've only got one store or two stores and you've got a website, this isn't something that's just a luxury of multiple big chains. Actually, if you've got one store it's probably more important because if they are within a certain radius of where your store is, you probably want to get them in store. Right. So actually getting local inventory ads set up properly, and it's probably easier as well, your data's probably because you might even be picking your eCommerce stuff from your store anyway.

Richard Hill:
And I think that, what you did mention as well, I won't let that escape because I think guys that are listed, they're making sure those feeds are getting refreshed, not just once a day, if you're running on a lower stocks, which is understandable, especially now more than ever, obviously stocks got its own challenges. But if you've got low stocks, you sell out, the feed says you've got it. and you're booking stuff and you're not refreshing those feeds-

John Readman:
Or you're going to waste your money on your advertising, it's going to affect your quality score over time and that is actually worse than not doing it in the first place.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Ultimately have a disgruntled person coming into the store for something that doesn't exist, or all sorts of challenges. That's the same with any shopping feed, again, quite often you log in, you see the usual suspect of issues in a feed, obviously only updating it once a day at midnight. If you've got fast moving stock coming through, you obviously can change that to whatever you want. So making sure those feeds are getting updated regardless of inventory ads, normal ads, shopping ads.

Richard Hill:
So I always like to sort of do a bit of a future thinking, a bit of crystal ball. So if we sat here in 18 months, what do you think we're going to be focused on? What we're going to be talking about, what we're going to be saying. What's coming down the pipe, do you think?

John Readman:
Meta ads. So I see understanding the inventory, how do you price the inventory in the billboards at the side of the FIFA football game that the kids are playing.

Richard Hill:
So you're sitting here, what your... So your ad is in FIFA, in the game-

John Readman:
On the game, targeted in a personalized nature based on the demographic of the players.

Richard Hill:
Wow. Love it. Love it. In the game.

John Readman:
In the game.

Richard Hill:
not at the stadium, we're not talking about us at the-

John Readman:
No, not us at the stadium. So me playing you, I'll be Leeds United, you can be Lincoln Town, and we're playing each other on FIFA-

Richard Hill:
I get it, and then I see Argos adverts for darts in the-

John Readman:
In the game. Yeah. And then it then retargets you because it knows you've watched those... Because you're logged in some way to play the game with the same email address. So then it's got first party data on you and then it'll follow you around, something like that.

Richard Hill:
[crosstalk 00:42:21] onto Facebook, or Meta again, should I say.

John Readman:
Well, yeah, they've nicked that name, but yeah. The other one-

Richard Hill:
[crosstalk 00:42:28] it to be fair.

John Readman:
No. The other one, in terms of giving you a real example apart from FIFA is, as I've talked about before this whole cycling thing, I use an app called Zwift and Zwift is this thing that links to my Turbo Trainer and I cycle in the virtual world round London or up a big mountain, or there's this thing called utopia, which is just made [inaudible 00:42:49]. But I can cycle down the mall in London and there's billboards. And there's people advertising on these billboards, they currently pay just to do a deal, but they could do a CPM based on the demographic and I could buy that media on some form of, I don't know, demand side platform. Where I go, I want cyclists who are in the mid forties who ride a bike like this who are cycling around London on a Sunday afternoon. Boom.

Richard Hill:
[crosstalk 00:43:16] cyclists, isn't it?

John Readman:
Yeah, we've done a lot about cycling... But what else within that sort of virtual environment can we do? And then the other one I would say, this is a bit of a leap and I've seen the technology work, but people are scared to roll it out is now there could be out of home digital boards, like the ones on the tube and like the ones by the side of the bus stop, that can analyse... They initially thought it was going to be facial recognition, Richard, but they now reckon your gait is the best way of analysing people. We all have a unique gait. They can confuse some people's faces, but the way you walk apparently is pretty uni... And they've got software now that say... And this has all come back from the CCTV in London with the police watching people with their hoods up. Anyway. So I think soon we will see personal ads as we're walking towards them.

Richard Hill:
Got it.

John Readman:
Or walking into store. Right. So I walk into say, I don't know, Crew Clothing or whatever, it knows, "Oh, it's John Readman walking in." And it shows me the products I looked at online yesterday. It gives me a discount to buy them.

Richard Hill:
Shows you a super handsome 40-year-old biking down the street.

John Readman:
Yeah. My mate, not me.

Richard Hill:
It reminds me of, I talked about this the other day actually, I did a talk to one of our clients. Do you remember the film Running Man? Schwarzenegger back in the day, I think he's running through the airport, just trying to hide and he sees the ads on the billboard-

John Readman:
All targeted at him with his face on.

Richard Hill:
Relevant to him and that's 25 years ago in that film. As obviously it's set in the future. But absolutely, you walk into a store, yeah I think that as well. I was talking about this very thing two weeks ago, walk into a store, that store has got the data on you, it knows it's you either based on your mobile phone, your code on your phone.

John Readman:
Oh, yeah, there's loads of data they can get on you. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Start to see on a mirror on the wall, mirror technology maybe, you start to see yourself on the beach in Thailand as you walk in the travel agent.

John Readman:
Yeah. I think all of that, and I don't think it's spooky if it's executed well and if it's relevant. A lot of people think it's a bit spooky, but I think it's... Yeah, people got used to retargeting very quickly, as long as it's relevant and interesting. It's just linking it all together.

Richard Hill:
I'll have to get you back on in 18 months and we'll compare notes on our in-store experiences. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, John, it's been an absolute blast. If you were to recommend one book to our listeners, what would that be?

John Readman:
Ooh, a book, right. I suppose, for this group of people, I've read a lot of books, I've got loads of books I'd recommend, but for this group of people, I'd probably say there's a book called The Four, which is all about Amazon, Apple, eBay, and Google, the bit of Facebook, the big sort of four technology businesses. Yeah, that's a very good book about sort of the rise of the big tech firms and what their impact on the planet is. I would say that's a good book.

Richard Hill:
Brilliant. I've not had that mentioned, so that's great. Thank you so much. Well, for the guys that want to find out more about yourself, more about Modo25 and what you're doing there, what's the best way to do that?

John Readman:
So either have a look at modo25.com or askbosco.io, or just drop me an email at john@moto25.com.

Richard Hill:
Brilliant.

John Readman:
Yeah, that would be great.

Richard Hill:
Thank you. Well, thanks for being on the show. I look forward to catching up again some time.

John Readman:
Excellent. Thanks for having me, Richard.

Richard Hill:
Bye.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eCom@One eCommerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our eCommerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the eCommerce Marketing Agency.