Richard Wood

We’re getting good traffic… but we’re not seeing the leads.... A Head of Marketing in manufacturing said that to me last week. Their SEO reports looked great. Bounce rate down. Page views up. Session time solid. But leadership? Still not convinced. Still questioning the budget. Still seeing marketing as a cost centre. And this is the problem. If your reporting sounds like: “We increased engagement” “CTR is up 12%” “The blog performed well” But not: “We generated 6 qualified leads last month” “Two are in proposal stage worth £75k” “Here’s what we did to drive them” Then you’re not showing impact. You’re just describing activity. And activity doesn’t win investment. Pipeline does! Data shows marketers waste around 37% of their budget on activity that doesn’t drive revenue! That’s the bit your FD hears loud and clear 😬 So if you’re in a traditional sector and marketing still feels slightly detached from sales… It’s time to close the loop. Build your reports like a salesperson. Talk like someone who owns the number. Otherwise, you’ll always be justifying spend. Not growing it. If this hits close to home, feel free to drop me a message. Always happy to compare notes or talk through what might move the dial. #MarketingThatSells #RevenueMarketing #B2BMarketing

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When chima mmeje🏳️‍🌈 moved to the UK in 2022 and launched the Freelance Coalition for Developing Countries, she quickly noticed something surprising: 90% of people signing up for the Tech #SEO training thought it meant “SEO for tech companies”. This was a simple misunderstanding caused by a lack of awareness and she knew she needed to do something about that. She realised many people from developing countries had historically gravitated toward content work, as it’s often the easiest entry point into the industry. Chima shares how she herself first got into SEO through content, simply because it was something she could teach herself without formal training. Chima also shares how instrumental Aleyda Solís was in getting the FCC off the ground in its early days - and how she didn’t hesitate for a second to offer her help. Watch the full episode here https://lnkd.in/eyaWT7Ks

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My annual post recommending digital marketing trends to watch is now live, covering the new techniques and opportunities to look forward to in the year ahead. ✨ 🔮 📈 🚀 https://lnkd.in/ejh6s5GZ Of course AI is the main game in town, but which aspects of AI should you be taking a look at from a strategic POV? I cover 5 top-level use-cases of using AI to support marketing. But AI isn't the only game in town and I also look at the latest Gartner hype cycle, our updated Martech tools wheel and other opportunities to improve marketing across our RACE framework. Please take a look and let me know the new techniques and trends which you think will be important for you in the year ahead.

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📢 Google’s AI Mode is here in the UK - and it’s changing everything. Google has launched their most powerful AI search experience yet. Unlike traditional search, AI Mode introduces a conversational, context aware experience powered by Gemini. It’s not just surfacing links, it’s generating answers. For brands, this marks a major shift in how digital visibility is earned. To win in this new landscape, here’s what you need to focus on: ✅ Be reference-worthy - your content needs to be clear, trusted, and well-structured so Google cites you in AI responses ✅ Double down on EEAT - expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness are critical to appearing in generative results ✅ Optimise for entity recognition - make it easy for Google to understand who you are and what you do at a semantic level ✅ Create for context, not just keywords - content must answer broader intent, not just rank for specific terms ✅ Embrace structured data - schema, FAQs, how-tos, and product markup are foundational to being picked up by AI systems ✅ Rethink your performance mix – this is key, it's never been more important for paid and organic to work together to own more of the AI-influenced customer journey. A siloed strategy is a big no no. Hello Everysearch™ It’s never been more important to seriously rethink how your brand shows up in search. #GoogleAIMode #FutureOfSearch #SEO #ContentStrategy #DigitalMarketing #FoundEverysearch Found.

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You’re not alone I’ve worked with agencies across the UK, US, and Australia. Different structures, specialisms, and markets. But the same five challenges show up again and again. They’re not caused by a lack of ambition. They stem from systems that haven’t evolved to support the pace, complexity, or commercial demands of agency life today. Here’s what I see most often, and where to focus if it sounds familiar. 1. Success is defined differently across the business Creative wants standout work. Client service focuses on delivery, margin, and retention. Strategy wants to challenge the thinking. Ops manages risk and resource. Everyone is working hard, but in different directions. That friction drains energy and slows decisions. Start with shared clarity at the top. Define the kind of clients, work, and growth you want more of and make sure every team understands how that translates into priorities and decisions. 2. Leadership becomes a bottleneck when the conditions for leadership are missing Founders try to step back. SLTs carry delivery. Teams look up for answers because they don’t have the tools or confidence to lead. Most people are capable of more. But they need commercial visibility, clear decision rights, structured coaching, and feedback that builds judgement over time. Without that, progress flows back to the top. 3. Account management is asked to do more, without being shown how to lead The role has expanded, but support hasn’t. AMs are expected to grow accounts, protect margin and shape client experience, but few are taught how to influence outcomes or lead conversations. That changes when agencies redefine the function, make commercial expectations clear, and build confidence in strategic decision-making. 4. Teams are sometimes not burnt out, but emotionally flat Workloads are stable. The chaos has eased. But energy is low, and momentum is missing. This is what happens when autonomy increases but clarity and feedback disappear. What teams need is alignment on priorities, meaningful one-to-ones, and regular input on how they’re tracking. 5. The positioning looks credible, but doesn’t convert You have strong work and solid creds. But conversion is slow, and too much relies on individuals selling the story. The issue is often relevance. Most propositions are shaped internally, without testing against what clients are actually trying to buy. You can’t mark your own homework. If the brand isn’t doing the heavy lifting, your team will always have to. So where do you start? Clarify what kind of growth you’re building toward. Strengthen your leadership layer with clear roles, commercial context, and coaching. Build habits that connect ambition to action. If you’re unsure where to focus, I’m happy to share the questions I use with new clients to uncover what matters most. I'm here to help.

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How to use AI to improve agency performance! Episode 2 of the Prompted podcast has just wrapped up - this one all about how agencies can use AI to improve performance. (And some painful examples of when they really shouldn’t). This month, me and Nick Handley were joined by the ever insightful and inspirational Stephen Kenwright. Stephen was the first person we wanted to get on to talk, having such a rich history in agency leadership, the nuggets in this episode were non stop. We discussed: - The right (and wrong) ways agencies are using AI - Ways to bring your team along on the AI journey without killing creativity - Practical use cases that can make a real difference to client results And what you can do about it. Sharing actionable insights you can use to help you out day to day. Big thanks to COLONY for hosting us 🙏 Look out for the episode when it drops in a couple of weeks once our editing skills have improved somewhat 😂 As we map out the next few episodes, I’d love to know, who would you like to see us bring on next??

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The AI Paradox There are two big risks with AI in customer experience: Going all in on AI 👉 You get efficiency, speed, automation. 👉 But: you risk becoming boring, rational, predictable. Everyone uses the same tools, so standing out becomes almost impossible. If everyone succeeds in optimising, the result is a market of sameness — efficient, but average. Ignoring AI and focusing only on the human 👉 You may create warmth and emotional connection. 👉 But: you risk being too slow, inefficient, or impractical. Customers may walk away if you can’t match the convenience they expect in a digital-first world. This is the AI paradox: both extremes are dangerous. How to avoid both risks? The way forward is not choosing between AI or human, but building a hybrid model: Use AI for what it does best: automating the rational, removing friction, creating speed and convenience. Use humans for what only humans can do: adding emotional depth, creativity, storytelling, and empathy. The winners will be the brands that combine AI-driven efficiency with human-driven resonance. If you go all in on AI, you risk becoming average. If you ignore AI, you risk becoming irrelevant. The future belongs to those who master the mix: efficiently human.

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Most businesses are stuck thinking about AI as purely a cost-cutting tool. Jim Lecinski thinks this is exactly why marketing teams, in particular, are getting sidelined whilst CEOs prioritise growth. Jim is a Clinical Professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School and former Google VP who saw the AI revolution coming years before ChatGPT launched. His strategic framework cuts through the noise: map AI applications across two dimensions - internal vs external impact, and efficiency vs transformation. Jim argues the magic happens when you move beyond the obvious productivity plays. Take IKEA's AI interior designer - it doesn't just save costs, it gives every customer access to professional design expertise that was physically and economically impossible before. That's transformational growth, not just incremental efficiency. The companies winning aren't just doing things faster and cheaper. They're doing things that were never possible. In our latest podcast episode, Greta Thomas and I had a brilliant conversation with Jim covering his framework and real examples from Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and others that are actually driving growth with AI. Worth a listen, particularly if you're thinking about doing more than just being more efficient - search 'Don't Stop Us Now AI Edition' on your favourite podcast platform or grab the link from the comments.

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This is me at the lectern last week giving a talk on AI, SEO and Digital PR. It was a Figaro Digital event for marketers working within financial services, professional services and B2B. I've been asked quite a lot about this subject recently so here are a few of the main take-aways from my talk: 1. Don't panic. Yes things are changing and it's ok to feel overwhelmed by the avalanche of AI news, but things aren't changing quite as quickly as some would have you believe. AI search is tiny compared to organic Google searches and the intent behind those searches is quite different. You have plenty of time to consider your approach and adapt activity before Chat-GPT overtakes Google, if it ever does. 2. SEO isn't dead. If you are doing best practice SEO then you are already doing most of what the LLMs care about. Ignore the hype. Rather than being dead I think we'll see the opposite, a boom in demand for good SEOs who understand how to rank in both search engines and AI. 3. Brand mentions are vital. Having your brand spoken about and reviewed in the press and on social channels is one of the most important things if you want to get more AI traffic. That's why being great at Digital PR is a superpower. 4. Data is limited. We're at the start of things so the tools we are used to haven't been created yet or are far from where we need them to be. Those great keyword suggestion tools and the ranking software you're used to aren't really a thing yet. This is important if you are requesting or defending budget for this work as it's a lot harder to do projections and harder to prove value. I was hoping people would find the talk useful and thankfully the attendees did, with 94% of the room rating it "very good" or "excellent". With that in mind I'll be delivering it at other event in the coming months. Watch this space.

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