Danielle (00:04)
Okay. Count down.

Simon Dell (00:08)
Right. well look it looks like we're already there we go. It looks like it's already started recording. It was it was

It was tricking me thinking it hadn't started. So welcome to the SEMO marketing podcast. That's thrown me completely now. I've forgotten where I am and who I am and all these kind of things. before we do the introductions to our guest, my name is Simon Dell. I'm the CEO of SEMO. if this is your first time here, you spell SEMO C-E-M-O-H. if this is not your first time here, you already know how to spell that. but you can find out more about us if you want at SEMO.

Or you can come and email me, Simon at CMO.com or find me on LinkedIn. We are Australia's largest fractional marketing network. We find marketing solutions to marketing problems or growth pro growth solutions to growth problems because we're trying not to say marketing anymore. So but my guest today is Danielle Coffin. Now, Danielle, it's cold where you are. Where exactly are you?

Danielle (01:14)
I'm

in Melbourne, so

Simon Dell (01:15)
Okay.

Danielle (01:16)
yeah, middle of winter. It's

Simon Dell (01:18)
Okay.

Danielle (01:20)
yeah, it's pretty crisp.

Simon Dell (01:21)
And we've got the heater heater blasting in there, keeping you warm, yeah?

Danielle (01:25)
Yeah, yeah, that's the the background noise.

Simon Dell (01:28)
Okay,

so cool. All right. Well first of all, tell us a little bit about you. You've obviously been in marketing for a fair few years, but give us the

Danielle (01:36)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (01:36)
give us the edited highlights of of the of Danielle's career.

Danielle (01:42)
yeah, so pretty squiggly career. but yeah, started in at uni, literally after finishing year twelve, studying marketing. As my dad said I'd be good at it. I didn't really know what it was. so yeah, and I I fell in love with it. just the the people side, the psychology side.

the communication side, like everything about it really resonated with my personality and my strengths. and then yeah, started internship at IBM at the age of twenty in marketing and yeah

Simon Dell (02:16)
Okay.

Danielle (02:17)
that kind of kick started my career. So yeah it's nearly it's o about eighteen years. So not trying to tell you my age. But yeah it's and yeah it's just been such a a fun

I just, yeah, lived overseas, did all of the things whilst, you know, still building my career. had my own side ventures, have worked in-house, have worked agency, have worked as a consultant, so kind of seen every side

Simon Dell (02:47)
Yeah.

Danielle (02:48)
of of the marketing landscape and and from different lenses. So that's kind of got me to where I am today to actually run my own consultancy and fractional marketing

kind of offer that I I have for some retainer clients and then I have some kind of other offers for for for people that aren't as like ongoing.

Simon Dell (03:09)
Yeah.

Danielle (03:10)
and yeah, I just love it. And I just think that, you know, to me marketing is quite simple and I think the industry and everyone in it can overcomplicate it and now with AI, it has

kind of brought a whole different dimension to to marketing and growth and all of those different aspects of business and lowered the barrier for everyone to be a marketer.

Simon Dell (03:35)
So what's

what's been your highlight of the career so far? What's the what's the favourite bit that you could go back to if you could?

Danielle (03:42)
to be honest, it's right now.

Simon Dell (03:44)
Okay.

Danielle (03:45)
yeah, I know that sounds maybe a bit fluffy, but I've been literally working towards ha running my own my own kind of consultancy and managing my own hours and owning my time. For about the last seven years I've been working towards this and

Simon Dell (04:02)
Okay.

Danielle (04:02)
yeah, this year I was able to financially be able to do it. you know, we've got a young family, mortgage, all of the things. So I didn't do it

you know, willy nilly, there was a lot of thought, a lot of planning, a lot of preparation. and yeah, so I'm just absolutely loving my weeks. I wake up Monday morning just so excited.

Simon Dell (04:21)
Cool. Well look, we're gonna talk about AI today because obviously it's everyone's favorite subject to talk about at the moment, especially its its impact on on marketing and design and creative and all the other aspects of growing a business. but before we sort of do that, because the the title for this was why AI is making is making bad marketing. and and I kind of wanted to get an understanding of what you define as bad marketing, because that's

That's a fairly open ended, you know, statement in terms of or an open ended definition as anyway.

Danielle (04:59)
Yes. So I mean, from the outset you don't know if people's marketing is working or not, because you're not inside the business. So what might look like it's working might not be un underneath.

Simon Dell (05:12)
Yeah.

Danielle (05:12)
and that's where kind of I

look at it differently because I've it have I've had so much exposure to businesses, the inside of businesses, working in agency, we had about twenty clients at any one time. So we had like a front row seat to their data, what was working and what wasn't working. And a lot of it wasn't working.

And you know, there's all those vanity metrics of like, they've got so many likes, they've got so many followers, all of the things that can really make you look like you're doing well to someone else. But at the end of the day, it's the conversion metrics of sales, leads, booked calls, you know, all of those really

really strong metrics that that's what you need to be looking at as a business owner over did that go viral or why did we you know did we get that many how many likes did we get or how many impressions and I'm like how much traffic do we even traffic to the website I'm like yeah cool but is it converting what's your bounce rate so you know having that exposure I now see as well with all of the AI use you can kind of see an AI produced

you know, ad or a social post or even website from a mile away because there's

Simon Dell (06:32)
Mm.

Danielle (06:33)
they haven't done the foundations. and so if you don't have your foundations right, you are feeding AI just absolute BS. and it's just not gonna produce the outcomes and the growth and

the you know at the end of the day everyone wants sales from their marketing right that's what we're we're doing

Simon Dell (06:52)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Danielle (06:53)
marketing for. so you know it's just starting to kind of help business owners and leaders in businesses

start to kind of call out some of the BS that they might be fed by their agency or their marketing team or even themselves, I don't know, to try and help them really get those foundations right so that then you can produce good marketing that actually works and converts.

Simon Dell (07:21)
Let's well let's take it back a bit before like let's go back three or four years. 'cause obviously w we we didn't want to talk about how old you are and how old I am, but

you you've alluded to, you know, almost a twenty year career in marketing. Before

Danielle (07:37)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (07:37)
before AI rolled around, what was what was bad marketing then? What what would you what would have you called out? Even maybe before

social media, maybe,

Danielle (07:47)
We can

Simon Dell (07:48)
you know, what what was what was what what is taking AI out of it because we know that that the slot that that can produce. But yeah, what is what is bad marketing?

Danielle (07:59)
Yeah,

so mine is my take on it and this doesn't matter what channel you're using, how you're getting your word out there, if you don't know who you're talking to and you don't have messaging that actually helps them feel heard and understood, then you're not gonna cut through to your audience, no matter where you're doing that, whether it's an event marketing, whether it's big billboards, whether it's radio, whether you know, back in the day when we kind of

You know, we're doing that more, whether it was you know, commercials, you know, you just those that's kind of the main crux of it. And I see it

Simon Dell (08:40)
Yeah.

Danielle (08:40)
time and time again that people get into business and a lot of them are technicians, you know, they've they're good at it some sort of technical thing, whether it be hairdressing, whether it be making something with wood, wooden things, candles, whatever. You're good at that. And then suddenly

Simon Dell (08:56)
Mm.

Danielle (08:57)
you have to know how to

Do business and market yourself. They're

Simon Dell (09:01)
Mm.

Danielle (09:02)
not good at doing that. And so suddenly you're trying to talk to someone to sell them something, or promote something that you're trying to sell, but you actually haven't done the the nitty-gritty work to really understand who they are,

Simon Dell (09:19)
Mm.

Danielle (09:20)
what their, you know, motivations, and I'll go into this as part of my like, you know, ways to fix, you know, bad marketing.

Simon Dell (09:27)
Yeah.

Danielle (09:29)
And yeah, so if you and you don't have the time to do that because suddenly you're like, I need to make money, I'm stressing.

Simon Dell (09:35)
Yeah.

Danielle (09:36)
and you get into that kind of rat race cycle and it's not till, you know, maybe you make a certain amount that you start

Simon Dell (09:43)
Mm.

Danielle (09:43)
kind of building on that, but you haven't still done the foundations of who you're actually talking to. And I think people get a bit scared, so they start to broaden their audience parameters, which can

Simon Dell (09:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Danielle (09:56)
sometimes dilute then your messaging.

Simon Dell (09:58)
Yeah. Well I I I guess the the the sort of the next question I have is is how is a a you feel obviously AI is amplifying the problems rather than fixing problems. you know, often we were told in marketing throughout the years that more output is supposed to help. Like you know, if you listen to i

If you listen to the likes of someone like Gary V, you know, and

Danielle (10:29)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (10:30)
you know, years ago, not years ago, not actually not years ago, but in the in the near past, he he would sort of say, you know, just volume of content, volume if of of volume of content, volume of engagement out is the solution. The more you do, the more these channels will notice you, the more you'll get shown to the customers, the bigger your business will grow.

and obviously what we're seeing now is that is that solution to a degree on steroids because you know AI is doing it all for us. Have we have we sort of gone out the other side or do you think that more is better was never actually the right solution?

Danielle (11:18)
I think it is if you are giving the right content. So

You know, Gary V is very much around the give, give, give, give, give, and then you ask to receive. So, you know, he gives a lot of free advice, a lot of free tips, a lot of this, and I think, you know, he's very you know, he understands who he's talking to as well. So

Simon Dell (11:38)
Yeah.

Danielle (11:39)
you know, the you know, the producing more and more content, that's not the issue here. I think the issue here is they're producing content that is either confusing, it doesn't, it's not consistent on message, on brand, it's it is

you know, it might even contradict each other. And I I'm a big you know, if I'm reading someone's content, suddenly they've brought something in that they you know, a few I've got a bit of an elephant memory. A few weeks ago they said something different. I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? Okay, I'm starting to lose trust in this brand.

And so y it's just very you've got to be careful if you're pushing out a lot of content, you really need to have those foundations

Simon Dell (12:20)
Yeah.

Danielle (12:21)
strong so that you are staying consistent. because once you start sh pushing out inconsistent messaging, that's when you start losing trust, which is what

Simon Dell (12:34)
Yeah.

Danielle (12:34)
I just kind of was saying before. and then you start confusing your audience and then once you confuse, you lose.

Simon Dell (12:41)
We well before we come on to the the sort of solution side of things, your sort of you know, the the three things that we that you're gonna talk about in terms of fixing this. it's probably worth stressing that this isn't an anti AI argument. It's a it's not

Danielle (12:58)
Not at all.

Simon Dell (12:59)
it's not saying, you know, we need to go back to the the the basics of writing stuff down with a pen and paper. You know,

Danielle (13:04)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (13:07)
you know, so it's but but

The struggle I think a lot of a lot of businesses see is that there's they don't know where the line is. They don't know where the line between making something better and something worse is. Do you do

Danielle (13:20)
Mm.

Simon Dell (13:20)
you kinda have any ideas as about how businesses should sit to understand where that line is?

Danielle (13:27)
Yeah, so I think what I say to my clients and and things is just like, what can you physically do? Like from a resource perspective, are you able to push out content every day? Or is that gonna stress you out? you know, because we're we're starting to kind of come out the other side a little bit with

you know, the way that we consume content, you know, I have real strict restrictions on myself with my phone and my social apps and the way I consume content. And I you know, I know a lot of other people are starting to do that too, because we've kind of gone down here and then out the other side like we do with everything that's new and exciting and different. and then we realise the behaviour of it isn't probably as healthy as we thought.

And so that's where we start to be a bit more discerning and and start to, you know, put those human barriers and boundaries around ourselves. and so I think, you know, a little bit we are we have been consuming content so much and so rapidly that, you know, sometimes we forget to enjoy life and be in the real world. the amount of kids I see walking with just their head down, don't even see me c walking in front of them

Simon Dell (14:39)
No.

Danielle (14:40)
and

looking at their phones and

So I think, you know, there's definitely a a line, and I just say to, you know, the business owners or leaders, you know, what can you from a resource perspective or from a realistic point of view, like what can you produce each week from a content perspective? What makes sense for your business as well? So instead of like, we have to be the next Gary V, which is not the business model I want. I don't want to be in front of the camera all the time. but you know, he does, and I know other people, I've got other friends who

do want that. They've got a camera person with them all the time and you know all of that drivers they can do content in between meetings and stuff. And I'm like, that's awesome for them, but is that what you want? So I think that's just part of that like self-awareness and really feeling figuring out what you want for your brand because once you start producing that content and you get known for that, it's kind of hard to to kind of stop and and change and divert.

Simon Dell (15:40)
Yeah. Well look let's think about this the three things that you that we that you'd flagged

Danielle (15:45)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (15:45)
to sort of fix this. any y

Danielle (15:48)
Yep.

Simon Dell (15:49)
any particular order that you want to approach them in?

Danielle (15:52)
Yeah,

so the first one is 100% knowing your audience because that f filters into the next kind of two steps. So this is not like, you know, putting together a demographic of, you know, females aged twenty to thirty who live in this area. Like yes, that forms part of it, but it's really getting into the deeper side of what they need.

what they don't even know they need, what are their pain points, what are their motivators, you know, how do they spend their day? What are they where do they spend their time so that you can really understand

you know how you can get in front of those people and then from there you can start to figure out what kind of messaging and stuff is gonna cut through. because I always say to my clients that you know if you're trying to reach a cold audience having kind of a problem solution style messaging is the best way to kind of get in front of that those people to take some sort of action whether that be click something to your website, even download a free

a piece of resource, you know, a lead magnet that can get them into your email list. so kind of, you know, really understanding what their problems is and how your product or service is gonna solve that is a key, key thing to kind of unpack here, as well as elephants in the room. So I know a lot of people like to shy away from things that are

kind of you know taboo or gonna make their audience a little bit squirmy, which could be price, it could be you know, one of the downsides of your product or service or something like that. But I might call that out honestly, like it's gonna help people feel seen and heard and understood. as well as going through objections that you might get when you're going down the process of call out objections earlier.

Simon Dell (17:49)
Yeah.

Danielle (17:51)
And frequently asked questions. So there's a few things that can be unpacked in this to kind of really understand your audience better. and then yeah, my kind of little actionable tip here is that one of the things that is really interesting around what motivates us is that as humans, we're actually more motivated to move away from pain than we are to move towards pleasure.

So calling out

Simon Dell (18:21)
Yeah, yeah.

Danielle (18:22)
pain points and things that might be you know, they might be experiencing now and then how you can solve those is a really strong place to start.

Simon Dell (18:35)
Yeah. Okay. So that's number one. What's the so a and and again t I think number one is number one one number one feels like more number one feels like traditional traditional marketing, like what we should what we were doing, you know, twenty years ago when we both w we started out, you know, started our

Danielle (18:48)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Has it changed? Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (18:54)
careers. and and just before we sort of jump on to number two, I I think this is

I think one of the solutions or one of the processes behind number one is is to which which I think a lot of people forget to do is actually go and talk to the customers, is ar

Danielle (19:14)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (19:15)
is a level of market research and you know, to actually sit down with them and go

you know, what is it that you want, what is it that you need, and you know, how can we help you? And those kind of those like nice long open questions where

Danielle (19:31)
Right.

Simon Dell (19:31)
you get some insights from them. you know, rather than making assumptions based on you know

Danielle (19:38)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (19:38)
even even if you've got data, never never make the assumptions based on that data. You need to sort of find out the motivation behind that data. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Danielle (19:45)
Mm-hmm. It's the emotional the emotional motivations, yeah, which you can't get from data. And

I think as well what I say to my clients as well is don't just pick any cli any customers, like who are your like

best customers who you want to get more of those people in, you know, so you can think about like-minded, you know, okay, what what motivated you to need this, you know, and all of that stuff. So it's really important and a

Simon Dell (20:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Danielle (20:15)
really easy thing, you know, a a low-hanging fruit to to action.

Simon Dell (20:20)
Yeah, yeah. okay, so d number two, what's your s sort of suggestion?

Danielle (20:25)
Yeah, so number

two is then starting to really pat out some really strong messaging.

and va and a really strong value proposition. So this is where you talk about your audience, not about you. Which we can all get really you know, it's really easy to start talking about ourselves like we do this, our mission is this, we do that. I and I think you need to flip the script.

And it really needs to be about your audience. So using what you've done in you know, unpacked in in the number one around, you know, knowing your audience and stuff is then really, and you can use AI to help you kind of craft this, but really having some strong messaging, some strong positioning and and value proposition statement that really brings the value you're gonna bring to that audience. And making sure that you kind of have, I like to have it on like one one or

two max pages because once it starts to go down to like an eighteen page document which I have seen from of many clients I'm like you ain't gonna remember that and I get you know where you you wanna feed AI with a lot of this stuff and train your AI

agents and whoever whatever platforms you're using to understand your audience. But if you have too many different messages, it

Simon Dell (21:52)
Yeah.

Danielle (21:52)
can s again start to dilute your content and your marketing. So my thing as well here is you know marketing is not about saying a hundred things once. It's about saying one thing a hundred times. So consistent you know repetition, repetition because as you as we said before, we're all consuming content so rapidly

And if I see something here and then I see it here and then I see it there and then I see it there and it's all the same messaging and then I get an email about it, it starts to cut through, right?

Simon Dell (22:24)
Yeah.

Danielle (22:25)
so I think it used to be kind of the seven touches of marketing, and now I think we're looking at like 15 because we are just in a content-driven world. and a lot of it is white noise. So I think yeah, having a really starting to really unpack those messages and

And again, you know, talking to your customers about it, talking to your clients, starting, you know, I also do research around competitors here. Okay, what what are they doing? How are they doing it? and then also like forums and things where you your audience might be hanging out, Reddit. I know that sounds bad, but there's a lot of people trying to get answers and asking questions on Reddit,

Simon Dell (23:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Danielle (23:10)
Facebook groups that kind of are in your industry or the

type of work you do. So you know there's really interesting places where you can find this content. And again, like you can help AI can help you do a lot of this research as well. But you need to prompt it properly otherwise you're just gonna get crap in, crap out.

Simon Dell (23:31)
Hm. Well that's a that's an interesting,

you know, that's an interesting conversation because you know, I give an example, me and my business partner have been having a similar conversation with Claude in the last

Danielle (23:44)
Mm.

Simon Dell (23:45)
couple of weeks and but we both ask slightly different questions, so the conversation goes off in a different direction.

Danielle (23:54)
Mm.

Simon Dell (23:57)
And I think there's a that there's obviously a danger, as you say, that if you rot if you ask the wrong questions, you get the wrong answers.

Danielle (24:03)
Mm.

Simon Dell (24:05)
and sometimes, you know, sometimes actually understanding the questions you should be asking is the first step of all of this. You know, otherwise otherwise

Danielle (24:18)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (24:19)
you do. You just end up going in a

in a circle of you know i i it you j you just end up producing a a false what what I would call false positive. You get the answers to something

Danielle (24:31)
Yeah.

Simon Dell (24:31)
that you think's right, but that wasn't the problem in

Danielle (24:33)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Dell (24:34)
the first place.

Danielle (24:35)
Yeah, yeah. And it you know, AI doesn't have a a frontal lobe. So it can't it can't kind of, you know, when a clients ask me questions, I'll be like, do you mean this? Like, 'cause I can kind of troubleshoot and and figure out kind of what they're trying to do without whereas AI is you know, they want to please you. So, you know, I actually

prompt I tell my Claude to say, you're my devil's advocate. Like tell me this is crap. Like

Simon Dell (25:05)
Mm-hmm.

Danielle (25:07)
so and that actually does give another another lens, which I've done for a few a few things recently and I'm like, that's actually really good.

Simon Dell (25:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Danielle (25:16)
and yeah, 'cause you you don't want to just have someone pandering to you the whole time because it's just not how you're gonna grow.

Simon Dell (25:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, third third and final kind of tip in terms of of handling

Danielle (25:29)
Yes.

Simon Dell (25:30)
the AI here.

Danielle (25:31)
Yep. So the final thing is a channel strategy. So this is where instead of being on every platform known to mankind or woman kind, whatever we can say now, actually think through back to your audience of knowing where they are, who where they hang out.

What channels do you need to be on? And it doesn't have to be all digital. You know, where do you need to be? Do you need to be at a certain expo every year? Do you need to be at certain networking events? Do you need to be you know, sponsoring an event or a podcast? Or, you know, where do you need to be? Where do you where are your audience hanging out? And where are they gonna be taking notice? you know, so

Obviously there's the social media and low lower barrier, less expensive platforms like social media where you can show up on Instagram and Facebook and you know, TikTok and LinkedIn and all of those places. But you know, but are your audience there? Like you need to be a bit more discerning around it. Like I've had clients, you know, say, you know, I think we need to be on TikTok and I was like, Why? You're not you're not targeting anyone under the age of thirty.

Simon Dell (26:49)
Mm.

Danielle (26:50)
and they were like, my daughter said, you know, I should I'm like, okay. Well, let's just be a bit careful. So I think it's just really thinking through and using that human brain that is just such a wonderful thing to figure out, you know, and you know, a lot of it is trial and error too, but you know, finding out where your customers did find you again, talking to your customers again, how did you find me?

So yeah, it's just I think, you know, back to talking to your customers, I'm not sure if it cut out just before.

Simon Dell (27:20)
Sorry, I I y I we lost I lost I got Yeah, no,

I got cut out there. I don't I think one of us got cut out there, so that's all right. We'll sort that we'll sort out in the that in the edit, so yeah.

Danielle (27:29)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I was just saying

Yeah, so I think just not having to be everywhere but really thinking through that and you can do that, you know, through chatting to your customers again, and doing that kind of audience research to really figure out, okay, where where am I gonna be able to cut through and be noticed.

Simon Dell (27:56)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Look, I think there's a lot of there's a lot of good insights there. I think there's a lot of good ideas. I think

I think the the general gist I get from that is that AI is there to support you know, not traditional marketing, but you know, so s more solid marketing approaches rather than replace all of those. Is that would is that sort of a fair conclusion for for what you're saying here?

Danielle (28:30)
Yeah,

so really having those marketing foundations understood from your end so that you can prompt your AI to really do good marketing for you and

Simon Dell (28:43)
Yeah.

Danielle (28:44)
cut through to your audience.

Simon Dell (28:45)
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much for your time today. ap apologies about

Danielle (28:49)
No, I think you're happening.

Simon Dell (28:51)
the little the little glitch at the end there. but hopefully that wasn't that didn't affect anybody else. and look if if people want to reach out to find you, what's the best way of what what's the best way of of getting in contact with you?

Danielle (29:06)
Yeah, so

my Instagram is my marketing makeover. That's my handle. Or my website is my marketingmakeover dot com. They're kind of the two avenues best to contact me on. and then I'm also on LinkedIn as well. So

Simon Dell (29:24)
Yeah. And of course you're on the CEMO website as well. I'd have to keep telling for everybody that as well. So look, thank you very much for that.

Danielle (29:27)
Yes. I'm a pr I'm a fractional VR.

Simon Dell (29:31)
some great insights. really appreciate your your time today.

Danielle (29:35)
No worries, Summon, thank you so much for having me.

Simon Dell (29:41)
Cool. I think that stopped.