Episode 95: Digital Marketing With Bruno Gavino

Episode 95

00:00

Everybody, I’m Rob Cairns. I’m the founder CEO and Chief Creator of amazing ideas of studying digital marketing. In today’s podcast, I sit down with my friend Bruno gavino. from Portugal, where we talk about digital marketing trends. I really enjoyed having this conversation. I hope you enjoy listening to as much as I did have. We sit back, relax, grab your favorite drink, and enjoy this week’s podcast.

00:37

morning, everybody. Rob cannon chair. I’m here this morning with Bruno gavino, who’s a digital marketer in Portugal. How are you today, Bruno?

00:46

Well, thank you for asking. I would like to start by thanking you for having me on your podcast. It’s really exciting.

00:54

It’s a pleasure. So we were just talking before Come on. Before we came on, to record the podcast times are tough right now we have COVID. We’re both still sitting at home in our home offices having this chat. You know, it’s it’s hard right now. How are you and your clients doing at this time at this tough time.

01:17

Times are tough times are tough. It’s a, I think there’s a change a global change in perspective, not only every one of us is dealing with this. Being at home working. working from home, a lot of us saw our first time working at home, or some of our clients are working at home also for the first time, you have to have your own meetings in the middle of all the kids and all the other issues that usually are not part of your daily life. And that changes a lot of your perception, everything becomes more, there’s a merge bigger merge between your personal life and your professional life. And I think it’s changing everything. In terms of like what’s happening. For our clients in terms of business, also, we’re finding some clients are changing based on their strategies. Others are like, waiting to see how all of this evolves, we have something different because like, no one can say, look at this model. Let’s do it like this, because no one has been here before. But then again, it’s a new new time a new opportunities to come up with creative ideas and be completely disruptive. Try to think differently. Because I like to say that this is like picking like when luck rate cards, like this is the you know that card that comes in and makes everyone stop because there was an accident. So now we’re all at the same pace again, no one knows exactly how the next lap is going to be like and we can we can speed up together?

02:45

Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that’s going on from what I’ve seen in Canada, and I know your client base is kind of Europe in the US, if I recall right, is people are starting to pivot. So we’re seeing a lot of change where people are going to have ecommerce stores are finally waking up and saying I need to do this. You can thank Jeff Bezos over at Amazon for that whole pivot, as far as I’m concerned. Most thing to a really good Podcast Series right now. Between Walmart and Amazon and the differences there. I think a lot of clients are changing the way they do business. Jeff, thoughts on that?

03:27

Yeah, because we were all for the past years trying to try to realize where would the digital transformation come from? Would it be from the CEO or CTO, but no, he came from the virus itself, suddenly had it everyone had to jump in and become like a technology company and had to become prepared to have a specific streamline for online sales. A lot of companies were already there. So they were trying to do that for the last couple of years. But then others who didn’t had like this super short window to speed up and go online and start selling online, with all the problems that that has. Because sometimes selling online is not just obviously not just setting up your online store has a lot to do with everything from logistics to delivery. Everything became super complex in a very difficult time. So I think is we’re, we’re experiencing that, in a larger scale, a lot of clients focusing more on e commerce and online retail, trying to do most of the sales online. But also you can see clients changing from more of a long run strategy where they were like, for instance, trying to they had like a strategy for search engine optimization, for instance. And they were like thinking ahead thinking that they would be they want it to be relevant in six months or a year. But now they’re like into more of a like a paid paid strategy more on top of like performance, making sure that they got all the sales like They can, they could, as fast as possible. Something else that we are witnessing is we have clients at very different speeds, obviously. So some industries are highly impacted by this. So like everything related with, for instance, we tourism, it’s like hotels, rental car rental companies, all those clients. They’re like, taking it really hard. And they are struggling with new ideas and new business models to turn around this problem. And others are thriving. Like they’re the ones who are selling consumer goods or like kids toys online. They’re thriving, and our sales are off the roof. So it’s this change in behavior. And this change of the consumer is impacting the industry globally. And the different verticals have completely different challenges.

05:45

And no question. We talked about tourism my, my stepdaughter actually works for one and Canada’s biggest tourism companies company called fight center. And needless to say, they’re all at home right now, just because there’s nothing going on. I mean, tourism has been impacted in such a big way. And I think if you’re in a cruise industry, frankly, you’ve got even bigger problems, because I don’t see anybody jumping on cruises or frankly, going to resorts for a while. Part of the problem with the resorts is most of the resorts work on a buffet model for for food. And we all know, with COVID, that buffets aren’t a good thing. One thing you mentioned, you’re talking about SEO and PPC, or pay per click a little bit. So I do want to go there because the we’ve seen a trend in the US lately that major companies so we’ll go to companies like Unilever, Coca Cola, Nike, they’ve actually canceled their PPC ads to make a political statement, because the politics in the US. And I was on a conversation with a client who’s got a medium sized business, they said to me, Rob, what do I do last week? And I said you spend on PPC now if you don’t care about politics, and he times it by 10. And he said to me, why would you do that night said Believe it or not pay per click ads. Facebook ads are at an all time low for cost right now. Do you have any thoughts on that? Or that?

07:15

Yeah, totally aligned with your thinking here. I think it’s a it’s a good opportunities. What happens every time these massive companies come online, and they bring all their marketing budgets into Facebook, Google, all the all the other ones, yeah, they kind of shift the price, what happens like they they put so much money in that they end up harming everyone else didn’t when they’re not present, I think it’s a good opportunity for everyone else to be present. But then again, you have to have, if you’re not going to, if you’re not like a super involved into politics, and if you’re like, at this moment, trying to save your brand, trying to save your chain or whatever, I think it’s a very good, it’s an interesting moment to be to invest in. In these platforms. It’s what we’re witnessing is once again, the average cost per click is decreasing in some industries, but also it’s increasing substantially in others. For instance, like an industry that had like a super controlled cost per acquisition was takeaway. And people are takeaway, obviously, all restaurants all over the world now became like takeaway restaurants, which is impacting costs substantially. It’s, this is like a small example of one of the one of the areas where if you are not, if you haven’t started planning for digital marketing ahead, your cost of entering will be huge. So I agree with you, I think if you’re not a very if you’re not very focused on politics, and if you are just looking at the numbers and trying to figure out the next dollar, I think I would go into a more hard sell strategy and more bottom of the funnel, AdWords or Facebook ads or whatever, PPC campaign that you’ve that you feel that will bring you sales.

09:05

It’s so true. And I think what these businesses need to work at is even p PPC, as we know, is a more short term strategy than SEO. And, and it’s getting harder. I mean, if I had you and I had $1 for every time Google changed the rule we’d be rich men right about now I have to tell you that. And it’s funny because I was reading another article about Google My Business pages and you know, on GMB pages, Google’s limited a lot of stuff that can be done during the pandemic. So there’s a lot of that going down. And and frankly, they’re so inundated right now, they’re not even getting back to people in a support perspective. Like it’s just, it’s almost like the Wild West right now, isn’t it?

09:53

Yes, it is. I think, particularly for small businesses who own their day. operation, they’re not on top of these things. And they sometimes neglect the importance of keeping all this information updated. I know that during these times, the information that you can upload is limited. And let’s say if you have like a dental practice, and you have to close during certain times or have a limited patience, because of the local regulation, all this information should be uploaded to their Google My Business to make sure that at least the moment that someone is deciding on that specific search, that information can be critical for the consumer to make to realize that we are all that that’s that we are all aware of what’s happening and that Yeah, the businesses are compliant with whatever regulation they might have to, to implement.

10:46

Yeah, two of the big two of the big concerns here has been things like nail salons where ladies go and they get their nails done, or her haircut places. And what I’ve seen is, a lot of those industries are moving, even booking appointments online, where they do it over the phone. And now they just say, go to our website, book our appointment. And and you know, this is stuff they really should have done like years ago, but now they’re starting to say, Hey, we need to do it. I’ll share with you last yesterday, I was while I go up for a walk every day. And I was walking by Canada’s second biggest shopping mall, which is about 10 minutes from me. And I don’t go in there at the best of times, I’m, I’m an Amazon guys. So you know, it’s it’s easy to get stuff sent to my house. And even it is quieter than normal. So I think things are changing. What is the biggest website trend date your agency sees in the middle of August shifting around? What’s the biggest thing?

11:50

What is actually super interesting is the conversion rates are way higher than they have ever been. But not necessarily the amount of traffic that we are. onboarding to most websites is it’s bigger, because I would say it’s not most of ecommerce has actually experienced the decrease in overall traffic. But in terms of like the quality of traffic has improved substantially. People who are on the look to buy something there. I think they’re when they’re getting into your some websites, they are more they’re closer to conversion than they were before. It takes less convincing. I think the consideration phase is shorter. And once again, I think people have more time on their hands now than they ever had, which helps a lot. I think when they get into your your website, they already decided they probably read reviews, they were they’re more informed than they were. So it takes a lot less convincing. I think that’s one of them. The other one I would like to think to stand out is is it the time on site is increased. Like I would say, even in industries decreasing in terms of conversion time on site has increased. And it’s a clear indication that people are moved online. A lot of other times they a lot of the time that they were spending doing something else now they spend online. And so that helps, that helps pull into the example that we have on sometimes discusses a client they have a furniture company and furniture is like like the no one. I mean, people were using the website as a consideration but they weren’t buying anything there. Which is a good chair and a good desk because people are were sent work from home. But they at home, they don’t have an office. Sometimes they like they’re working at the kitchen table. So it’s happening, it’s exploding in the furniture industry is like set up your own office at home. It’s like numbers like I’ve never seen before.

13:57

You know I was reading an article. And you guys have a key over in Europe and we have IKEA here, IKEA his business in their office supplies have gone through the roof, apparently. So. And it’s interesting a number of people that have been at home and remodeling like, you know, you look at our house and we put a new mattress in our master bedroom and we put a new sofa and in our living room in the midst of all of us. So I mean, there’s there’s all of that going on too, because people have all this time. So they’re kind of looking at stuff. So they shift. You’re right, they’ve shifted where they’re spending their money, they’re spending their money more on at home. Another article I read that said computer desktops were up for the first time in sales in the last six or seven years versus tablets and mobile phones. So as a result, what I’m seeing a lot of is more non mobile searches going on on websites because everybody’s at home. You know, some some of that? What is the are you still seeing a lot of shift to e commerce from a lot of your clients who don’t have e commerce for?

15:12

Where I mean, I think the the speech has changed a little bit when this started, everyone was going, let’s go online, we need to fix this, we need to make sure that we’re selling tomorrow. But I think now maybe getting to the idea that the car is not going to have one structural problems to solve. Will brings brings bring us back again, to the root of marketing is like, who is my consumer? Yeah, let’s start with that. Okay, now that we know who our consumer is, then maybe we can build a store, specifically, for those consumer needs. I mean, makes no, the first impulse is like, let’s stop everything and go online. But then when you stop thinking to think about it, you should do it should be part of your five year strategy, and not three months strategy just to go over the virus. Because as you obviously are aware that setting up an e commerce making it profitable, the there’s like, it’s not something that can happen overnight. It’s something that takes strategy takes a very deep understanding of who your customer is. Who’s your target audience? How can you expand it? How can you convert it, because like, the web is full with, with other URLs and competition. So you make, it’s very important for you to make like to give all the steps in a specific direction, much more than it was like in the beginning of the crisis and the beginning of the crisis, everyone was just panicking a little bit, in trying to fix problems that they couldn’t fix for the past few years in two or three months. I don’t think that’s happening right now.

16:58

Now, I think people have calmed down pretty, pretty much. I mean, you know, and in Canada, I think what we’re seeing is people are more level headed, they’re not panicking. I think the businesses that we’re seeing that are in trouble, frankly, we’re in trouble anyway. Some businesses are set up for disruption, the movie industry being the biggest one, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not a big fan of going out to watch movies anyway. But Canada’s number one movie chain was set to be bought by a British conglomerate. And it happened it all fell apart in a pandemic. And now there’s, oh, it’s your fault. You’re zero fault. There’s lawsuits flying around like nothing. But but to be honest with you, I think that industry has been set up for disruption for a long time. I think the real estate business, we’re seeing million dollar homes being sold on virtual tours, sight unseen, which is unheard of. But you could see that coming. I mean, the real estate business has been the whole brokerage model in North America has been set up for disruption for years. So I don’t think the pandemics really caused anything except move things up about a year. If you get what I’m saying. Like I don’t think it’s a shift. I’m the I’m going to switch gears for a minute, there’s two things that I wanted to sort of talk about. I’m a big believer, I was having this conversation with a good colleague last night, that the only two things that you actually own in digital marketing is one is your website. And the other is your email list. If you have any thoughts on that discussion?

18:38

Oh, well, I think I love how you say it, because it’s a, it’s like a, because you have no idea how many times I told this to my clients. It’s like, you need to look up through your website, because he’s your, your active, it’s like, the only thing is like a real estate thing, picking up again, it’s like, even not only the way you show yourself to the world, but it’s also it’s like the piece of land that it’s actually yours. Because you can actually fight for more in search engines or whatever it is like it’s if you have a position there, you kind of secure for the future. So it’s a little bit, it’s your little territory where you can actually be your own. You can do your own ideas and explore them like to the limit. And your email list is critical. And these days, it’s actually something that it’s working particularly well is email marketing, email marketing and bringing clients in, especially if you’ve been building a good CRM and you know more about your customer base than actually just their name and their emails. If you know what they’ve been buying or what if you know what their interests are, or in the limit if you know how connected they are with society, you will know that you can

19:55

form a very important that a lot of people lost their main sources of writing You and brands have also the responsibility and the responsibilities over time to to give some vision to people to to make sure that after whatever this is happening, we will also we will all be here. And that we are thinking ahead because we have that responsibility as marketeers to try to understand what the world’s going and to make sure that we will, we will have a better a better world after the after all of us happening. So I think email marketing can be really, really powerful. What I think it’s happening is a lot of companies are because obviously they’re struggling with sales, pushing into very hard sale emails, which I think sometimes are being don’t have the same performance as it did before like discount super on top of discount, completely out of context. But other email marketing is if you start with something like a message, it’s sometimes it’s not just a sales messages like he’s What are companies doing, he’s always see the future. He’s how you see you as being part of our future. And then the sales pitch after that can be super interesting in reconnecting and building the engagement that these people have with the brand and had before.

21:11

Yeah, it’s so true. And I and I don’t think like I don’t think hard sales, even today, forget COVID doesn’t do what it did. 20 years ago, I think, where marketing is is is building that relationship. And sometimes some of the best clients can take six months to a year to build. And we and we need to recognize that it takes time. And I mean, it’s little things like, you know, a lot of people take the the effect with email marketing, you basically set it and forget it. So you pump out the newsletter, once a week, you don’t curate your list, you don’t segment or feel as they don’t do any of that stuff. Well, it takes work. And unfortunately, even email marketing is not a set it and forget it. strategy at all you you have to segment off your list, you have to clean your list, it’s all there’s all kinds of things you need to do from a corporate standpoint, and and the more you do it, the better off your list will be. The other thing I’ve seen even in my own list, since COVID, started in March, I’ve added 4000 people to my marketing list since COVID started, because people are are looking for the right information to help them succeed right now. And that’s really important.

22:31

Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally agree. They. And I would say that not only not only that practice, but it’s a very potent time where all the best practices that we’ve been talking for the past few years, have to be put in place, like be positive in the way that you write things. Be positive to your relationship into your client database, the way you address your message. Make sure that you are likable, make sure that the things you say resonate with your audience, not just like don’t send something that okay can be interesting for you. But is it interesting for them. It’s also something very important. Sometimes also, something we don’t see is enough assertiveness, okay? It’s important to be assertive, the message has to be there. But it has to be concise, has to be direct and has to resonate, which with each one of us. Say also very good opportunity to work on this engagement as you were saying, because relationships are also all always about understanding the other and not just focusing on yourself. I think we can all once again, go back to this and do our homework and look at our all of our newsletter and you think okay, I am I doing this? Am I connecting? Or am I just saying talking about my perspective on it

23:44

is so, so true. And the tip I would give any business owner out there listening is sign up to five year competitors, email marketing lists, and find out what they’re doing and watch them and scrape and, and if you’re worried about being found out, create a creative gmail account and just sign up and see what your competitors are doing. Because, you know, a lot of guys that are doing email marketing are just are just giving up an opportunity as far as I’m concerned. And that’s and that’s a big problem. So what would you say going into the summer we’re halfway through the summer actually, are the your your three big things or takeaways as a business should be doing in terms of digital marketing right now?

24:30

Um, I can in terms of big takeaways. I think the first one is the traffic that you already have, you should look into it very carefully. These people already are willing to spend some time on your website so they should be taken care of. and taking care of them means looking at all your website metrics and trying to understand Okay, are these people spending enough time here? What is the information flow inside my website? What are the people looking with other people reading? Is there any valuable information that I can give them? Because I know, a lot of times they’re looking for information. And we inside our own company, sometimes we have so much information that we could be sharing. And this information could be so valuable for our clients, sometimes we forget that this is something very, very important. Second, I would build a little bit, I would focus on engagement on all platforms that you’re in, either email marketing, social media, or even the content that you’re producing, you should be considering the other end should be considering your customer, the way the best way to get in front of your audience, and to connect with the stakeholders of your audience is actually by building this relationship. I think it’s very, very important to be that company right now. And I think it’s a good opportunity to because it’s a moment where everyone in one way or the other from personal life to business life, a lot of people are lost in the way that they don’t know exactly what’s the next step. So using this in a positive way, in making sure that you have something to add here could be could be super, super, super interesting. And then I think the end the last one, I would say, not very different from before this, but we’ll keep being something for the future is testing is like come up with a premise. Try to understand if this premise is significant to your audience, and then test something are actually people interested in what you have to say by downloading an ebook? Is it something like if you publish an article with the top five conferences that are happening online? Is it something that people can respond to this, try to understand them bit better try to understand what they’re looking after. And get in touch with them. Something that I’ve been witnessing, which is very interesting is the the the number of people interacting with bots, it’s increasing substantially. So what’s happening? So people are actually on the look for answers, which ties up to what he says like the the credibility of information and information itself, it’s so powerful. So it’s a good way to tie all of these three, and to to prepare for the next six months, because this is something it’s a trend that we I think it’s easier to say,

27:21

yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a company out Boston, Massachusetts in the US called drift, and you probably know them or don’t know the minor. There are conversational marketing company, and they’re very, very much big on bots, and they’ve gone that route. But I, I think it’s it’s a way to answer some simple questions, without having to tie up a customer service rep, or CSR, or tie up a member of the company, and that the body is set up properly, you can actually almost have your whole FAQ section frequently asked questions right in the box, they say, okay, but what are your business hours? ABC? How do I get there, ABC, and the BOC does it for you. So I think that’s a that’s a value because people are now at the point when they go to a website, they want an answer. Now, they don’t want to wait for an email back. They don’t want to fill out a form that says we’ll get back to you people just aren’t doing that anymore. It’s really interesting.

28:22

That’s really interesting. Totally agree. It’s like, I think, in this, for this case, in particular thing, Google set the bar pretty high, because you can go on Google, ask anything you want, and you will always get an answer. So people, I think, kind of kind of are expecting this from everyone else.

28:37

Yeah. And the other big trend I see really is is an increase with voice search voice searches becoming big, we all have an I have to be careful what I say in this room, we all have that Amazon device that sits on our table or the Google device. And I have both of them. So I have like a mixed environment at home. And and I mean, how easy is is it to say, hey device, tell me the weather Tell me where I can find this or order me this? Or I think we’re seeing more and more of that not just from a device perspective, from the devices at home, but we’re also seeing it from the phone as well. where people are issuing voice commands through phone.

29:19

Yeah, well, it’s a it’s a huge thing. Like I think according to Google, it’s 31% of all smartphone users use it at least once a week. I do. So it’s like it’s incredible. Also, the progression in natural language, the way that these algorithms are processing information, and how voice recognition systems first technology and how it’s well adapted to follow all of our everyday like all of our all of our day endeavors and all the way that we do small things. It’s so it’s becoming so immersive in our day to day that it’s going to be a huge, it’s gonna be huge. It’s already huge and it’s going to be much bigger. Do

30:01

you do you do a lot of work in? In Europe? Of course you’re in Portugal? Has GDPR been a blessing for you guys? Has it been a pain for you guys? How has that kind of played out? And I’ve been reading a lot recently with Brexit going on. And when that final finalized, that’s going to impact the whole digital marketing space in Europe. Do you have any thoughts on that?

30:29

GDPR has impacted businesses in I wouldn’t say in a positive way to be, I think it made us it made our our life as marketeers a bit a bit more complicated, especially in the lead industry. Which we are not exactly. It’s not our natural client is not the lead market, we’re more focused on e commerce. But in terms of like the, the lead sector, like the lead acquisition sector, sometimes they used as you know, not very regulated ways of getting leads. Yeah. And that, obviously, kind of made our lives a bit more difficult. In terms of GDPR, for most businesses is a I think like any other sort of regulation in the first six months, you need to adjust. And then moving forward, the the like the rules change, and you play by those rules, I think these days is not a it’s not an issue anymore. And you can see that some of these regulations are expanding to other places in the world, like also California now as their own specific GDPR. And some I was reading that, like a variation of these GDPR might be implemented in Canada and other countries like regulation, it’s something that it’s fair to say what I think can companies all over the world can learn from Europe is it is it made things a bit more bureaucratic in a way that you can’t really say anything, without making sure that you have the consent of people. And on the on the business side, it’s a great opportunity for agencies, because you can talk to a lot of clients saying, Okay, are you sure that you are compliant with all the regulation, I showed that every time someone deletes their record from your database, that everything actually goes away? It’s a good opportunity for you to sell auditing to these companies and making sure that all this regulation is in place. But I think on a daily operation make things that slightly more difficult for things that we were doing, like expanding audiences finding similar audiences?

32:36

No, no question. I can’t Canada, you can’t go out and buy a mailing lists, then just import it into your email platform. That’s actually legal. In Canada, we have what’s called the castle law. So the castle law says you must explicitly allow yourself to be on that email list. So if you don’t opt in, and you can’t prove people have opted in, so one of the one of the biggest problems is you walk into a big retail store, a fortune 500 store, and you fill out a form? Well, most of the stores are smart and send you back an email saying, Can you confirm because they need some tracking? Because if if they get called to the carpet, so to speak, what happens is they say, well, the person put their email lists down on a form and this and the government standard and says, So prove it wasn’t somebody else doing it for them and improve. And so that’s we’ve already gone down that road to some degree with email marketing and in our country, but we’ve even talked about tightening up our rules. I’m not sure if it’s good, or if it’s bad at this point. It’s just it’s another level. Investor websites, sit let’s go to the subject to website security, which is one of my most favorite or unfavorite topics, depending on the flavor of the day. We’re all we’re all online. We’re all seeing a more increase in hacks attempts. We all know the script kiddies are out in full force. Are you seeing an increase or decrease in your agency?

34:18

An increase in the need for better security? Yeah. Oh, where are we seeing an increase some substantial increase? I think in when you think about e commerce, the payment layer, it’s becoming less critical because all the suppliers are also becoming more proficient in the way that they’re there Darrell it’s very they’re getting more difficult to attack with this double and third validation for each payment so that makes it more difficult for like for for this layer to be attacked. So it’s easier for you What’s happened what’s I think it’s still critical is the way that your way Websites API sometimes can act with third party websites. Yeah, that’s something that’s sometimes not very, very well taken care of. And if you look into, like I say, a huge part of the industries, has a website built on CMS platforms that we can’t control everything that’s behind. Let’s say you have a website, and then you put in like five or six different plugins, each one of them will be developed will have been developed for some by a specific company. And it’s sometimes it’s very difficult to audit all the process and make sure there aren’t any loopholes, or there aren’t any leaks in information, it’s very, very difficult. Sometimes, as you know, it takes one wrong updates, to make a website super unstable. So that’s something that we’re where it’s a concern, what I what I think is happening with clients is more and more they’re aware of this problem. And if, on one hand, they feel that they don’t want they feel that they don’t want to invest as much in a website’s, on the other hand, they realize that sometimes building something up from scratch and making sure they control all the endpoints that you control all the API’s, and you control every all the information flowing in, it’s an added value for you. And it’s, it’s in terms of a liability. And in terms of like security, you way more protected. The third thing here would be the massive migration to cloud services. Also, it’s making our lives a bit a bit easier. Because all these platforms like the Amazon cloud, or Google Cloud, or any of these platforms, they have their own infrastructure and their own security infrastructure, which which makes it it’s another level of complexity. But then again, you sometimes you open the news, and you realize that huge companies like Sony been hacked?

36:48

Yeah, one of one of the biggest problems is the big companies have been hacked on always divulge it for months after the fact. And that, and that’s, to me a bit of an issue. But the other the other issue is, I see a lot with medium sized businesses, they don’t really worry about your web security until they’ve been bit, and then they find out the cost to clean it up is more than the cost to build that website in the first place sometimes. And then they kind of look at your life. And you say, did you have a backup? Well, my web host doesn’t have a backup, and I don’t have a backup. And we all know those horror stories. Don’t wait, like being in Portugal, who’s your web host of choice to have one?

37:34

We most of our websites are hosted on Amazon. Okay. So you guys on AWS? Yep. Yeah, it’s a. And then something else, just to add to what you’re saying? I think it’s something we see every day. It’s not only the attack, it’s sometimes it’s the consequence of that, yes, search engines, they go. for them. It’s like a red flag when you’re under attack. So you you might take, obviously, you can recover your website from a backup. And but it can take months to get back on Google very well. So it’s like some, because a lot of the as you were, as you were saying, a lot of times you don’t even notice it, unless it’s months afterwards. So sometimes when you go back and try to roll back and do get back to where you were, you don’t know, you just noticed that okay, suddenly, the you found this and there’s a huge problem that you have to solve. It’s not only just replacing the website is making sure that you delete all the the like backlinks, making sure that everything is consistent, making sure that all of the other, let’s say sometimes you forget that you are giving your website, your website is being mentioned on other websites, which sometimes there are partners, sometimes they’re like your business clients, sometimes people really important to you. And you don’t know, like when your website has been hacked, and you have like, your now suddenly selling Viagra or whatever it is. Yeah. And you’re, all your clients have a backlink to you. So like, you’re like making them making them like, terrible, like, you know, like being impacted terribly as well. So it’s like, as I agree with it’s very, very important, something that should be part of your checklist and should be revisited every few months.

39:17

Yeah, I think, you know, in our business, we do a lot of a website security stuff. And I especially with WordPress, and I think honestly, it’s a cost that a business owner just can’t avoid, like from a for the couple 1000 bucks a year. I think it’s money well taken care of, because at the end of the day, I’ve even seen occurrences where major web posts one in Australia, one in England, a to hosting in England or in Europe. They’ve had their backup servers hacked. So not only did the hacker take out their shared servers, they’re hacked took out the backup servers too. So when you get to that point It’s just awful. And then you say to the client, did your web developer set up a backup for you that’s not tied to your host? And they say no. And I, and I, oh, say why not. And we’ve all been this route, right? You’re laughing at me, but you know, this story, it’s and then the client for and then somehow it’s your fault that the clients web developer didn’t do what they were supposed to do. And, you know, and it’s a vicious circle. So and, and, frankly, I, I’ve seen everything from targeted attacks, to non targeted attacks. I used to be involved with a group that did the Ontario police Memorial, where we honored fallen officers. And you know, every year during the ceremony, there were targeted attacks at the website that was live streaming the event, and I could watch it on the server logs as it happened. I’d sit beside the media trucking, my friend and colleague would look at me and said, Rob, would you watch and I said, look at this. And I’d have one of the AV guys from Trump voice over my shoulder. And I’d say, see what’s going on here. This happens every year at this time, and you just end up we’re talking in an hour ceremony, we’re talking 200,000 hits. Jesus. And it just happens. I mean, so the other problem about having a website brought down, as you know, is that the impact your reputation, your business, and that’s the even more important thing is what does it do to your reputation?

41:32

Yeah, it’s and your reputation is not only your consumer, your client, but also the search engines, the bots. And like all the technology behind the web, that it’s looking at your website all the times. So sometimes it gives, you know, some of the attacks, they’re not visible. Like for the consumer, but at the back end, they’re like building pages. They’re like, visible to everyone else, except you sometimes. Yeah, it’s true.

41:59

So as we wrap up, is there any other thing you’d like to add about digital marketing? before? We

42:06

know I was just I would like to say that it i think is a very challenging times for everyone working in marketing, everyone who loves marketing and loves sales and loves consistent customer behavior and how people react to things. I think it’s a huge opportunity to be alive theories during this pandemic. I think it’s also the opportunity to see and to witness the first pandemic that it’s being broadcasted. 24 seven online. Oh, yeah.

42:36

That that is that is the drawback to having 24 hour news stations and social media data doesn’t shut down. Yeah.

42:45

And 6 billion experts on virology suddenly. Yeah. So yeah, I think it’s a freeze. Like as soon as, as long as you are able to distinguish information, I think it’s very, very interesting time to be alive to be around here to try to, to look into people and say, Okay, how can I as a marketeer help you be more comfortable with this?

43:10

So So, so Well said, Bruno, somebody wants to get a hold? Dear, can you share some links and your website address and your agency and all that, please?

43:19

Yeah, well, if you want to reach out it’s code design.org. So it’s just a Google it. I’m sure it will. It will show up. If it doesn’t show up. Just let me know. Because I’ll have to fire someone.

43:34

Yeah, I mean, won’t be you right. Maybe I would probably also step down. Thank you very much for your time you have a nice,

43:44

thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

43:47

Thank you. I want to thank Bruno for joining me on this week’s podcast. We really enjoyed having this great conversation and I hope you enjoyed listening to if you want to contact me please tweet at me at Rob Cairns or you can share corporate website at stunning digital marketing comm you want to email me VIP at studying digital marketing comm or you can call us 416 64 7647 This podcast is dedicated my late father Bruce Cairns, keep your feet on the ground, keep reaching for the stars and make your business succeed.