Introduction of the Interviewee

Full Name: Colin Hayhurst

Expertise: Startups

Years of Exp: 37

Company Name: Mojeek Limited

Designation: CEO

Website/ Blog: https://www.mojeek.com/

Twitter ID: https://twitter.com/ColinHayhurst

LinkedIn ID: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhayhurst/

Questions:

#1: Could you please tell our readers about yourself, your experience and how you came into the Digital industry

I trained as and became a Chartered Engineer, starting in hardware design, then product testing and development, which led me to develop product simulation tools from scratch, using mathematical methods and algorithms to approximate dynamical physical behavior. That was on an IBM mainframe (usually used for running payroll), so I fought to get the company to buy it’s first personal computer . Consequently I ended up leading, at the age of 25, on Computer Aided Engineering at a this very large manufacturer. I was developing large FORTRAN programmes to simulate gas and solid dynamics simulations. To cut a long story short 5 years later I was the co-founder of a startup and worked on many things; but notably developing high-performance computing software products for large companies across the world and before the web became a thing.

#2: How do you think Digital Marketing can help a business to be successful?

The large range of different tools that have become available to marketers in the information age mean that the process of bringing a product to market offers wildly different opportunities and challenges than before everyone was walking around with supercomputers in their pockets. People seeking to reach audiences can easily spend their money more effectively by utilising contextual targetting, and putting money behind their advertisements in relevant places in order to reach the kinds of people that they think are most likely to buy, use, or subscribe, rather than more broad brush measures like billboards or newspaper adverts. This being said, with great power comes great responsibility, and the ways in which advertising executives and marketing officers have used these tools in order to tag, track, and target people online has engendered a worrying degree of surveillance capitalism. I believe that these tools are very useful, but marketers should consider the degree to which they’re buying into systems that have long-lasting deleterious effects upon society. Focussed targetting is something that we categorically do not engage with at Mojeek as we fundamentally believe that it creates long-lasting systemic issues and facilitates a race to the bottom in selling processes which are antithetical to our pro-privacy mission.

#3: What is the most common Digital Marketing Struggle you find companies deal with, and what is your #1 advice for them?

Speaking within the context of marketing digitally for a privacy-respecting entity like Mojeek, the biggest struggle is where you draw the line on the use of data and how you stay competitive when other companies are heavily invested in capturing every single possible detail about their customers. I would say that people should take this as a challenge, because the smaller the pile of data, the more skilled you need to be in order to make inferences and run successful campaigns. The best thing to do is to identify the stripped-back metrics which best reflect success for you, and then to meticulously measure your journey up against them. One of the benefits of undertaking this process is that a lot of the user interfaces for modern analytics and advertising technology platforms are extremely cluttered, and a lot of that data can be overwhelming. By returning to the fundamentals of marketing you can get a much clearer picture of what you need to be focussing on, as well as not feeding money and data into the Big Tech monopolies and oligopolies that pervade our digital world.

#4: Do you think failure is a step ahead towards success? What was your first failure in business/career and what have you learnt from it?

I think you can and should learn from failures and successes. The first hardware product I designed, a new type of 400 kV switch, smashed to pieces in the first proof test. Among other lessons, I confirmed to myself that I was a lot better at software design than hardware design.

#5: After the Pandemic, what do you think about the changing dynamics of Digital Marketing?

Depending upon how governments approach the risk of a long and deep global recession, there will likely be a greater amount of competition for a smaller amount of customers as individuals and companies alike tighten their belts in response to declining revenues and disposable incomes. Meanwhile entities which make their money from advertising technology, such as Facebook and Google,  as well as the shopping network Amazon, will be able to solidify their positions. I very much doubt that we will emerge from this pandemic with a better digital marketing landscape, either from the point of view of an internet user or a company bidding on ads.

Key Advice for Growth:

#1:What in your opinion is The Top Growth Strategy to increase the Traffic/Leads of any website without spending on Ads?

This very much depends on the stage you are at as a business. My experience is mostly in the early stage before product market fit. Spending money on Ads at this stage is not the thing to do. Except that it can be useful to spend a bit of money to more quickly test your product-market fit hypotheses.

#2: What are your main “Dos and Don’ts” For Digital Marketers who wish to maximize their revenue and website traffic?

Digital marketers should focus on activities which build real community, ensuring that they are truthful, trusted, and transparent, rather than engaging in quick growth hacking tricks. At Mojeek we have a set of values that we’ve stayed true to for years; although it’s not as simple as the more junk food aspects of modern digital marketing, it means that your customers or users have a deeper understanding of what you stand for, and that understanding is built on a solid foundation of years of doing something a certain way.

#3: What should be the KPIs of a Digital Marketing Manager?

This will depend entirely upon what success looks like; this could be anything from sales to user base growth. An interesting lens to add on top of this is how far an individual manager can go without resorting to the dark arts of analytical tracking via surveillance capitalist methods. We have a tendency to think that there’s some great genius in the manipulation of people through tracking, but really it’s a case of playing the game on easy mode. I’d much rather work with someone who can get results in a less underhand way.

Key Advice for Success:

#1: A Million-Dollar Idea That Anyone Can Steal?

There isn’t one. There is also never a silver bullet. Nobody succeeds with out working hard and smartly.

#2: What are the Top 5 Digital Marketing Tools that Every Young Digital Marketer Should have? OR What are your Top 5 Digital Marketing Tools that helped you stay on top of your game over the years?

In order to keep up to date with important conversations online, I recommend a social listening tool like F5Bot; there are many pertinent questions which happen on the Web on any given day, and being able to cut through them quickly and identify those which are of most consequence to your goals is key. You cannot beat a well-made spreadsheet for taking down metrics on a daily basis when running campaigns, and knowing how to use a simple (or more complex in some cases) image-editing tool will allow you to easily be more of a one-stop shop, and to not bother your company’s designer too much. Finally a good blogging engine (we use Grav) coupled with a social network such as Mastodon or Twitter is an invaluable combination when it comes to getting your message in front of the people you want to reach.

#3: What are the Top 3 Skills that Every Digital Marketer should learn?

How to identify good sources of information and keep on top of what these sources output, how to talk to people (really talk to people, not just communicate from behind a screen), and how to properly analyse whatever data they have to hand. Statistical methods by and large stay pretty stable over time, whereas the platforms and tools that are needed to do the job will change… hopefully.