Where Digital Marketing Is Heading Next: James Dooley and Craig Campbell on Future-Proofing Your Strategy

James Dooley: The future of digital marketing. Today I'm joined with Craig Campbell and we're going to be going through future trends and how we can try to future proof what we do, not just with SEO but holistically with digital marketing. So, where do you see the trends kind of moving towards at present now we're in the AI era? I personally think data is a big big key part of it. You know, obviously with AI people are building robots scrapers and utilizing data and then we target people. So, obviously SEO may or may not die. Essentially, I think a lot of people are just going where else can I get traffic from whether it be scraping, emailing people, and and you know, retargeting people on Facebook or whatever it's going to be. So, I kind of see things being a bit more not relying solely on organic traffic to be honest. And I think even yourself probably subconsciously over the years is always just looking at other things whether you invest more in paper click. I know you do a lot of lead gen. And you'll be able to tell better than me cuz I don't do lead gen as such. I know paper click works for for one of my e-commerce websites and I I get a massive return on investment on it cuz it's quite a niche market. But, I think even for guys like you who are doing lead gen if you can spend X and get Y back doing, you know, whatever you get your data from or or you know, retargeting people and everything else. It's a smarter way to to kind of just get various different traffic sources and I think that's what we're all looking for now.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'll tell you something like that not many people know that majority of my profit is made in the in PPC. Yeah. So, I'll initially go into it with an organic SEO approach but the minute I've got some winning campaigns, I'm doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on the PPC budgets. If I can go and spend £10 and get £30 back, I'm going to be spending £10,000 a day if I can spend it to get the 30,000 back for sure, like. And it's so infinite scale where it's hard to keep trying to scale for so many variations of keywords. Like with regards to the source context of the domain, if you're known as being the premium brand, you can't really start going after like cheap keywords and stuff like that or affordables and stuff like that. Where generally speaking with um PPC, you can set up all the different ad groups and all different landing pages. You can go after everything. Yeah. And you're going, "Okay, I'll I will scoop it all up."

James Dooley: So, thing for me, I know enough people are doing paid ads, whether that's PPC or social media. Do you do much with regards to like any sort of social media like Facebook ads, YouTube ads, and stuff like that?

Craig Campbell: We we we try different things. Like for one of my websites, it's out there, the age demographic is 55 plus. So, social media is not that great. We would love to do more TikTok and and stuff cuz there's traffic there for a certain demographic. Um so, yeah, we've tried it. Some of it's not been as good, but that's more niche related than and demographic related than than anything else. But, yeah, I think, you know, going after that I've always been a fan. I think years ago I used to tell people, you know, do Quora ads you know, for getting cheap traffic and all that kind of stuff cuz there wasn't as many people doing that at the time. Mostly everyone's now jumping into Facebook and Google and obviously costs are rising for it. Um but as long as you can get the return on investment on it, you know, I I don't care. I'm like you. I don't mind, you know, if if something's working and I'm spending 10 grand and I'm getting 20 back, the the next question in my head is automatically, "Right, if I spend 20 grand, am I going to get 40 back?" Um and and you know, I'll double down on that. And I just can't be bothered uh with it. I'll do I I mean, I'll still do SEO and and all that kind of stuff, but you just can't you can't slap them out all over the place and and like, you know, feeding the LLMs and and all that kind of stuff. It's just the way you've got to evolve now. And is there going to be traffic there? I know arguably a lot of people um plugging yourself or or feeding the LLMs and and everything else. You're not getting a huge amount of clicks from it now, but again, you're always thinking, is there going to be a huge amount of clicks from that in two or three years' time? It's obviously going to grow at month on month, but um you've got to be looking at other anything else you can get your dirty hands on, whether it's free, paid, or holistic, whatever. And then, you know, something else. Uh you mentioned prior to recording me, even just building an email list. People not doing that stuff. It's mad.

James Dooley: Yeah, I think the off line you can try and take people off line and get that you own that email list. The issue is if you build up, let's say social media like the Twitter profile and the Facebook, you won't be able to move away from having that profile just being deleted. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And at that point, you don't own the the Twitter profile. Obviously, you think that you own the handle of it, but at any point, it can be deleted if you do something wrong. Yeah. So, for that point purpose, it's like, it can can you try and get their email and get the CRM and be nurturing them and stuff like that. Plus also, you'll know yourself like we're both hungry for traffic and trying to get people to come through to our landing pages. The minute you have an email list, then you can go and send the podcast out like this to the email list. Or you've got a product or a special offer, like Friday, you can send it to 30, 40,000 people in your email list. Straight away, you're getting sales from day one because of that. And also, that kind of viral traffic that's coming through to you guys is absolutely huge.

Craig Campbell: It's mad because when I launch that YouTube video, for example, one of the first things I would do would be utilize the assets I've got, whether it be social media, um mailing list, push notifications, and all that stuff as well. I don't even see that many people get push notifications get on either. I've had push notifications for years. Um And again, people are still they don't realize the importance of that data and I think we're now in a market where you're like that data is money on the table and you're you're missing out if you don't utilize it properly.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I think a massive one for me is branding. So, building a personal brand and building a business brand. Um trying to get the KG ID or the knowledge panel because then it forms part of the training data especially within Gemini and stuff like that. So, if you can form part of the training data that they're working on from a knowledge panel, it's the cheapest way of being able to get into the LLMs. But also, I think it's now one of the only digital modes that you kind of have around cuz everyone now can scale sites very, very quickly now. A lot of it's AI slop, right? So, if you can try to be adding in obviously data and surveys to it and stuff like that, then even better. Doing trying to do that information game. But a personal brand for me and a business brand is key for the future of digital marketing. You've always been a massive advocate of this. Like you've you're you've grown Craig Campbell brand to a phenomenal number now. Have you How did you get into that so early and go, "You know what? I want to build this out."

Craig Campbell: I You know, it certainly wasn't some weird vision where I went, "Ah, this is the way it's going." Just pure luck. You know, I I followed and I think you followed him as well, Matthew Woodward, at the time where I had the agency and doing all the client stuff and he was thinking affiliate guy building his personal brand and traveling the world and going to the conferences and all that. He was that guy. And he I was jealous of it. I'm like, "Man, he's loving the dream and I'm you know, basically bending over and getting pumped by clients up the backside." And probably shouldn't use that terminology, but you know, that's what it felt like and I'm like, "He's the man." So, obviously there was a transition everyone thinks I just shut down an agency one day and just all of a sudden when I know it's always a slow transition to to making more money doing affiliate and you can then off the client work. So he was the guy I followed and obviously my website used to get cartoon logo his had the cartoon logo with you know all that stuff. So he was a big inspiration for me going you've got what and I don't get jealous of I mean you know both met him and all that great guy and everything you're just like you've got I want to be what you're doing. So he was the kind of guy I was like I want to speak at conferences. I want to do this and I want to do affiliate and everything else and I just kind of followed what he was doing it just seemed like the right move at the right time getting sick of doing the client stuff and struggling to scale the agency just because it's stressful and all that stuff. So he was the the main reason for it and then obviously from the the opportunities that come from it and you know that as well with with your YouTube and everything you're getting people on can I work with you can I do this and it just creates other opportunities now like ah I'm going to double down on this now and obviously I've seen you do that and you know the other opportunities not just necessarily promotional work or whatever but just business opportunities come up from that and whatever else so it's it's kind of just naturally all kind of worked for me and yeah I'm still hanging on.

James Dooley: I think another massive one for the future digital marketing for me is social media. Mhm. Um like cross selling so if you've got a large following on Instagram trying to leverage some of that following and like sharing certain stories on your Instagram of your TikTok or doing it from your TikTok to your Twitter and to your Facebook so you're kind of building up across the board.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. Cross platform as much as you can. We we've invested in a sports betting brand and we're trying to get so many people like offline from those platforms as well to places like Telegram and WhatsApp so we can send like not only daily emails and do like a newsletter. We're doing like daily horse racing tips and stuff like that via Telegram group and there's engagement going on and stuff like that. Occasionally we can send an offer like a betting offer which goes through to the site. We get paid affiliate commission and I feel like that's the future of affiliate marketing, not just trying to rank the keywords. It's trying to get traffic through to your affiliate sites as well. And for those people that are still trying to be an affiliate and looking for the future of digital marketing, I think they need to be looking at more platforms holistically.

James Dooley: Yeah. Well, absolutely like YouTube's been good for both of us. Uh I don't particularly do that much on Twitter. I'm not really doing much on LinkedIn although I got a decent following on there but not something I'm pushing hard enough and I'm aware that I probably should do more on that. Uh and I think again going forward uh you know, you're going to need double down and all that kind of stuff and really work them uh very very well but YouTube's always been more favorable for me and I enjoy that more than sitting writing tweets and going off going here and getting a barney now. So, certain platforms I enjoy but again there's traffic in all of them so I think you know, anyone uh that's out there um that's doing digital marketing I think got to exploit them for everything you can.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, for sure.

James Dooley: So, everyone who's watching this, what do you think the future of digital marketing is? Is there anything that we've missed? Do you believe that writing books to get off a ship or doing podcasting like this is the future? Be interesting to hear your thoughts in the comment section. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.