Paul: 0:29

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Marketpulse, Pros and Pioneers. This afternoon I'm joined by Lawrence Howlett. Hi, Lawrence. How are you?

Lawrence 3: 0:38

All good, thank you. Lovely to be on the show.

Paul: 0:39

Lovely to have you along, and I can see you've got a green wall behind you. I love that. That's very different. It saves you a lot of fit.

Lawrence 3: 0:47

And it's fake. You can actually touch it. It's not a it's

Paul: 0:52

don't have to water it, right?

Lawrence 3: 0:53

And you're

Paul: 0:54

But you do have to dust it now and again.

Lawrence 3: 0:56

Exactly. Yeah,

Paul: 0:57

So if you're watching along at home, Lawrence is the director at MoreDemand. io, which is a lead gen agency that excels in generating high intent leads for competitive sectors like finance, debt, and claims, which I know is a really tough niche section. I've, worked on the other side of things from the customer service side. side of things and I know how important that side of things is. So with over five million pounds spent on Google search ads, Lawrence also has a proven track record of delivering results that are valuable and impactful. He's also the founder of Money Saving Advisors and Value Life who are companies dedicated to improving consumer financial decisions. Lawrence combines AI technology with innovative marketing strategies to help businesses grow and stay competitive in the digital landscape. That's a lot. that's, a tremendous bio Lawrence. I have to say three, three businesses, I guess two organizations and a business, right? What's, how did you get on that journey in the first place? Cause I assumed one of those was a starting point and the others have come from there, right.

Lawrence: 1:58

No so a quick summary of where, we got to. So out of university, studied entrepreneurship at university then became a commercial DJ for seven years. And Oddly, that was probably the most impactful training that you could have from sales and marketing point of view, because one, you have to get people to turn up to your nights because otherwise you're DJing to, your mates. And secondly you being on stage. And the, trying to control the crowd and get them with you and get them, into the night and enjoying the journey that you're taking them on requires a strategic approach and then tactics within the night when you're playing something that you thought would work and then doesn't. Finished DJing because I was nocturnal and couldn't do it anymore. And then, I was getting older. So finished that, started a web design agency. Sold that eight years ago now, and then went and did some consulting in the city for Societe Generale and some other banks and started up. Getting into finance lead gen through that, we were, we launched their short and leveraged ETP funds for sophisticated investors, which sounds wonderfully complex and is overly complex and, is what city folk love to hear, but essentially it was right. How do we get these people in a room to talk to us about this product? So that, that's where that journey started. And then LeadGen became more of a thing. I've noticed that more, advisors, brokerages, intermediaries claims management companies, et cetera, the lifeblood of any business is its leads So I was like what's not going to go anywhere for the rest of my career? LeadGen. So that's, where we are. 20 years of, I'm 41 now. So 20, 20 years of being in business, never had a job for anyone else. And always worked for myself. Yeah, that's where, we are now.

Paul: 3:52

That's amazing. And I guess Money Saving Advisors and Value Your Life then are your attempt to mitigate some of the challenges in the economic climate for For your average, for the people that you're, I guess nobody really wants to find leads in debt collection, right? Like it's, a necessary job, but I

Lawrence: 4:11

so money saving advisors, we do consumer credit protection. So things like specialist lending, so secured loans, mortgages Things like life insurance, health insurance, income protection, the, stuff that needs advice, pensions, drawdowns, annuities, et cetera. Value life's a different proposition that we're still, we're pre launch really with, value life. It's the, conception is that, unfortunately, we all have our demise and the, planning for that we've got competitors like, Fairwill, and others have done it online to create an online will writing app. But my idea goes beyond that to actually create something that makes the execution of that will very simple for the executors. So at the moment, when someone dies, you have to phone up all the financial institutions and go I'm going to bring in the death certificate close that account I have to actually go into branch, do this, do that, do, and you, the executives are phoning up endless number of financial institutions, especially if the person's got some wealth and, insurance policies, etc. And all of those financial institutions have to have people on the phone to pick that up, then to process it, etc. So Value Life's more about creating an open banking version. and protocols around winding up someone's estate. So that's where we're going with that, where you could imagine a a blockchain system that has the ability to go out to these financial institutions, verify that person has died, that they, have got that particular thing. Bring that into an escrow account and then distribute it to the beneficiary. So that, that's what we're, that's the vision for, value life, but that requires law changes and, all sorts, because we're still in the 1800s where we require wet signatures on things. But fast forward 20 years, that, that'll be a thing in the past, I'm sure.

Paul: 6:10

think that would be an amazing business to, to be able to bring about because having, recently not recently, but two, three years ago, went through that with my dad's estate. And not to say he didn't have much to his name, right? Like we, it's a humble background, but Even then, I just didn't want to be on the phone to people. I didn't want to have to ring people and tell people and send certificates out, wait for certificates to come back. I just wanted to get on with the grieving process. And it was, some of the experiences were horrendous and others were just really, nice and simple. So I think some businesses are already seeing the value of the elements of that, but I love the idea of bringing all that together. I think that's a really it's, got a good, Purpose behind it, which I love purpose centric products. I think they're just so easy to market as well. It's, a nice refreshing change, but good luck with that. Definitely

Lawrence 3: 6:58

Yeah, it's it's going to be a, going to be a challenge, but I think is, would, be wonderful to leave as a legacy and an impactful change that, like you said you know, and I'm, sorry for your loss by the way. It's, It's not a nice thing to go through and it re brings up the grief every time that you have to make a call about another policy, etc. So if we could make that very simple for the average person who's not got, financial training, etc. in the background, I think that's a big win.

Paul: 7:25

a hundred percent. And then, before we dive into a little bit more about more demand you used to race against Lewis Hamilton. What's that about? I

Lawrence 3: 7:36

I dunno where you got that fact from, but it is true. So from eight years old, again, this is my competitive nature. From eight till 16, I raced carts and our era was known as the golden era of, carting. By that, I mean that the British Super One, which was the pinnacle of carting at that point, we didn't have the lights of the worlds and the Europeans back then in the same format. And if you look at the, group that I grew up with through carting, we have, Lewis Hamilton, Anthony Davison, Jensen Button, Paul DeRista, all Formula One drivers. Susie Stoddart, as she was when I knew her, but now Susie Wolfe, Toto's wife. And you've got a plethora of, endurance drivers that are in, LMP1 cars are in, all these 24 hour, right? That era was It was a wonderful time to spend with my dad as well, eight years of, carting together every other weekend up and down the country. And I've just started my son carting as well. And he, gets a two year headstart on me. So he's only six but they now have a classical Bambinos, which send 30, eight, six to eight year olds out on a grid together. And they all go into the first corner flying at 45 mile an hour. So it's yeah, it's very interesting.

Paul: 8:50

can imagine. I can imagine. I've just got my son into goalkeeping, which you'd think sounds a lot safer, but it's actually not. When I saw the first couple of kids kick him in the head the other day, and I stopped there and thought, Oh, what have I done? But when, you consider that when he stubs his toe, it's the end of the world. But when he gets kicked in the head of the game, he stands up and laughs in their face. I don't know what I've raised. I don't know what, I don't know what's going on there. So back to the topics in hand then moredemand. io. How do you differentiate your lead gen approach from the traditional methods in that, what is a very competitive financial and insurance sector, right?

Lawrence 3: 9:25

Yes. Yeah, exactly. So for us, it, comes down to, and I just wrote a LinkedIn post on this about putting yourself in the shoes of the consumer. And that, that's a cliche, but I simplify our approach to creating offers, to creating hooks that and I've drawn this little map for ages and I'll, get a client in and I'll go let's draw a sad face on the left. Happy face on the right, draw a bridge, your company's the bridge, your list down the middle is the things that you do, the, jobs that need to be done to get them to that happy place. Let's dive into, what, are they feeling at the moment? We, just tested a landing page where, We had an image of someone of a hand holding a mobile phone with a mock up of a, quote on it. And we tested that versus a, like a Zen like image, where they're like this on, the page. And the reason that with the Zen image one is because. We were thinking about the customer and what position they're in, what they want, they're feeling stressed, and they want the outcome of feeling zen like with their money. So we're just trying to understand the real customer position at the moment, and how can we take them on a journey that that explains, that educates, that helps them and gives them a good outcome. And the question that I always ask, because lead gens are just, it's just a, It's been a horrible industry for a lot of years and, a lot of sharks in the industry, a lot of people that will just resend old data and call them new leads, that will run non compliant landing pages et cetera, et cetera. And it's and it's frustrating when you're trying to play by the book, but what, I'm getting back to is, And this is the question I always ask myself, would I be happy with my mum going through this journey and getting the outcome? And if I'm not, then I won't run it, moral compass. But how do we differentiate in the modern mind? I'm not sure it's about differentiation. This, happens a lot in a lot of, startup gurus, et cetera, always talk about how are you going to differentiate? Look, I've got a mate who's a multimillionaire from selling bacon. And his, it's not about differentiation for him. It's about his network. It's about who he knows, how he can distribute. It's about how he processes his business. So the differentiator doesn't have to be like this, big thing. It can just be that you do the thing a lot better. You've got a better process. You've got better people. Deliver a better result. That can be the differentiator. It doesn't have to be like this special magic thing that you've got. It. can just, it can just be that you, do things better. so we've developed a method called the, accelerated growth method that looks at all these pillars of the business. So it will look at. It will look at the lead gen, then it will look at the, dialing strategy of those leads, right? What's your follow up strategy on that? How are you getting reviews in? How are you aligning all of that to the ideal client profile that you want to get into the client? Are you getting enough of that mix of those ICPs into the into the funnel? What hooks and offers are working well? Have you tested different hooks and offers recently? So we're a sort of data driven. Test orientated firm that will apply our accelerated growth method that we've now, and we've only got a handful of clients because our clients spend, hundreds of thousands a month on, on Google ads. So we're not about, spending a grand or so on Google ads. We're looking at how can we take someone that's spending 50 grand and scale them to a quarter of a million on Google ads with the same, or, typically it's a bit of a less ROAS because you're stretching revenue and you'll take a gross margin hit, but the overall profitability is more, right? Yeah, that, that's that's verbal diarrhea of how we approach things at more

Paul: 13:28

I think That's an interesting outcome though, and I often say to people is, we always have this really grand image of differentiation and it makes people panic. Everybody stands there and Oh, how am I going to differentiate myself? And more so in the professional services sector than anywhere else, we're scared to differentiate because We don't want to look unprofessional and rightly right? You've got to make sure you keep that trust in the professional services sectors, insurance, banking, wherever. And what I say to people is, it's not about differentiating. You don't have to differentiate yourself by putting big floppy clown shoes on, right? It's about, it's about the business itself and like how they're different, not that the service or the product or anything else is any different realistically from what else is out there in the market, but how is it sourced? Are you more ethical? Are you more moral? Are you hold yourself to a higher standard? Are you more reliable? Are you nicer? Are there's all these things that you can differentiate yourself with. And I find a lot of people in that space are quite cold professional, but somebody who can show a bit of personality behind that to say, Do you know what? this is who we are. We are the people that stand behind this. And to your point, exactly. Would I put my mom through this? That is a great statement to hit the people like this is how we approach business. and moving on from that, you have Emma, would you like to tell the folks that are listening on at home who Emma is? Cause she's very important to your business, right?

Lawrence 3: 14:56

Yeah, so Agent Emma is our AI chatbot that operates over SMS and what she can do is, so this works well where you have highly volume call center and you have a funnel that has leaks in it, so it might leak because of no contact. That, that's the obvious one. So 100 leads through the door, you speak to 60 of them, 40 never answer the phone, right? So there's that cohort of data that you can go after. You then might identify some other cohorts. So say say this is a mortgage business and you've got people that are not sending their documents back. So you need SA302s or bank statements or ID, Emma can go out and chase that. But it's more than just, a SMS that goes out, Emma can actually have in depth conversations and contextual conversations that that allows you to for example, set up an appointment collect a payment, answer FAQs, she can then do credit checks we could run AML and KYC stuff, Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering. Anything that we can hook to an API. We've just built one for housing disrepair claims that will allow the client to upload an image to WhatsApp. We then go and analyze that image for the severity of the damage to the property. So if they've got, a water leak and there's mold and Up the wall, they take a photo of it and then it will assess the damage and the causation of it. So the stuff that you can do is pretty frightening in that respect. So that's what we're building. And each, case is different. we've built one for PCP car claims where she will mop up on, on data. That's not provided not gone through the credit check, not signed a letter of authority not signed the DSARS et cetera. That we can then process that claim. So she is a business processing agent that can work 24 seven, never takes a holiday, is always on and can have really, in depth conversations.

Paul: 17:16

I like the idea that. It's not just limited to the average chatbots. I've got a set amount of things that I can respond to here, but I've also got this wider, deeper context over here. If you want to go down that route, we can go there. I think from experience, I've got, a weird background in terms of understanding conversation AI and chatbots and stuff. So I understand it probably better than most. I think the biggest thing that a lot of people come back with is yes, but I get stuck in a loop. So I'm, assuming you've got that capability to then hand back to the agents for those people that do want to actually speak on the phone. She can then arrange those appointments and move that on, right?

Lawrence 3: 17:53

Yeah. Reschedule appointments, manage appointments notify of, missed appointments, et cetera. And she can take. Contextual answers to questions statements like yeah, Tuesday, at four ish. And she'll go and she'll reply, I was, it's 4. 15 better for you, so she has those, it just feels human. And we, depending on what job she's doing. so if it's in a a regulated space or non regulated space, we also have worker bots that sit behind Emma. that will check her for compliance. For example, one of our bots is trained with the MCOB handbook from the FCA, and that's its training literature. And we run every single reply through that and then give it a rate into whether we think she's leaning into giving advice or not. And if she's anywhere near giving advice, we ask her to reconsider her answer so that we can then repost that again. So we've thought about the compliance angle as well. and obviously she's trained on the customer's sales, literature, et cetera. Because when we onboard a client, we say look imagine Emma is a new starter. What, material would you give a new starter in this role? So then we collect all that documentation, feed that in, we take cool transcripts from The call center, both positive and negative outcomes put that into a transcription and then pull out themes of conversations, et cetera, so that they know how to steer that conversation. So it's Yeah. it's been a bit of an interesting journey. And it's not. It's not something that, cause we were like, Oh, we could build this into a SaaS product and it'd be great. It's just too complex. It's just too complex. You re it's really, a really bespoke bit of software that you integrate deeply into that. That business, all their different status codes in their CRM, all the different dispositions. And then you work out the cohorts of data that you think you can have a go at. And Yeah. so that, that's what we do. And we do it on a performance only basis. So there's no setup fees, no cost to run it. We cover all the SMS costs, et cetera. And, the, ideal client for us is where there's volume of data and we can, get it working across, the whole business.

Paul: 20:06

I know that there's some of those people in my network that they'll probably be watching along to this. So if you're interested, we'll drop the details at the end, how you can get in touch with Lawrence and the team. I guess you've mentioned a couple of times, Google Ads, Lawrence you spend a considerable amount and you help people who do spend a considerable amount of money as well. What would you say are the most important factors for businesses out there who are considering Paid search, perhaps for the first time, or maybe tweaking what they've already got to, be more effective.

Lawrence 3: 20:33

don't trust what Google reps say,

Paul: 20:36

You're not the first to say that.

Lawrence 3: 20:39

Honestly utter tripe, and we've got a, we've got a feedback session with Google this week, and that's going to be one of the points raised. And the, most frustrating thing is the recommendations, all the time, which is spend more, increase your target CPA, go broad. Now that, sometimes works. Sometimes definitely works, but so if you're going into Google ads for the first time, one understand that the first three months of a new account is data acquisition. Don't, you're not going to hit a home run day one. You're acquiring data and maturing the account. We like to think of it as a hockey stick, right? You're investing in data for the first three months. That's all you're doing. So yes, you're going to generate leads, but the, real value comes from a mature account where you've got, your, negative keywords sorted. You've got, your target keywords in, in the right order. You, you understand, how to scale it. And that might be through going, through a broad campaign. You're on offline data is, coming in so that you can see what's actually working in platform. All of these, things that you need to tick off the, and we've got a Google pre flight checklist. Another previous hobby of mine was flying and, checklists of what pilots do. So I run the whole business by checklists. I always have. So our pre flight Google pre flight is, things like have we got, GTM installed. Has that got the conversion link or are we tracking enhanced conversions? Are we, putting offline data into platform? Have we got a custom columns created so that we can see our lead to quote, to sale percentages, down to keyword and ad level. All of these things that we want to set up. If you go into, if you go into Google and use it, it's AI to write your ads, et cetera. You're going to just waste money. You've got to have a test plan. What are you going in with? Who do you want to, who do you want to come through this funnel? Why is it important that they come through this funnel? And what do we want to test and learn during this period? that's the, reality. of it. Yes, you can get some ads up and running very quickly, but to really get their account spending in those tens of thousands, you have to have a test plan. You have to know what you're testing, why you're testing, and then make sure that you've got the analytics to, be able to analyze the outcome.

Paul: 23:03

I can imagine that at home, there's two sorts of people listening to all of that. And the first lot are furiously scribbling things down so they can try and remember what to look for and self educate themselves. And the other sort of just gone, nah, I'm not doing that. I'm going to get someone to do that for me. I need to find someone who can do all that for me, right? How, did you guys just get started out through test and iterate yourselves? Did you work with partners and find that frustrating or where did it go?

Lawrence 3: 23:29

So we tested by the school of hard knocks. it was get, my Amex card out and spend some money and, learn the hard way to, be honest. And you, soon learn what, works and what doesn't, and it's changing. It's changing, we've, typically run really tight, exact match campaigns really heavy, negative campaigns and they, still outperform some of the others, but Broadmatch recently has been working in some sectors. Now, in some others, it just brings back. Because Google doesn't know the difference between a second charge mortgage and a normal mortgage and you can't you can't negative out the word mortgage because second charge mortgage has it in. It just brings back, first time buyer mortgage and stuff that's irrelevant to a second charge loan. In, in some It doesn't work, but others where it's got a, a product set where there aren't those nuances and you can go a bit broader, it works where you're feeding in offline data and staying on top of negs. But again, with Broadmatch, you've got to have a test plan. what are you testing? Why are you testing it? What? Offers are we going to test? that, that's always the first thing that I, tell the guys about is okay, what offer do we want to test here? Is it a top five page? Is it a compare page? Is it a free quote? Is it a check if you qualify, like what's the thing that we want to test and make sure that marries up with the landing page so that when they click on it, we're delivering on our promise of the ad. So that's, the first place to start. And I, don't think that. Changes from whatever business, even if you're a coffee shop, you could put a sign out the front and then you could test another sign the next week. Did you get more football? What were the variables? Was it raining this week? There weren't as many people in town. Was it raining this week? There's more people on the internet. A lead volume goes up. Was, ah, Yeah. exactly. You have to, think about outside variables as well. Every time Martin Lewis goes on the telly and, talks about will writing or something like that, boom, leads go up. But typically they're not good quality lead because they're all knee jerk reaction ones. They're not. People that have been in market and thinking about it. So we tend to turn off if that happens. We've got software that watches for those sudden spikes and we'll go and pause campaigns. But these are all things that you learn over

Paul: 25:54

Yeah. it's not as simple as just going out and putting some money onto your Google account and hoping for the best as, I know a lot of Google account managers would have you believe. Brilliant. drawing to an end of the episode, I've got a couple of questions that I ask all the guests. These are usually quite short and snippy answers. But what's one thing that really gets your go? In terms of either digital marketing or more traditional marketing that you see a lot of other business owners using that you just wish they would stop. What is, what, grinds your gears?

Lawrence 3: 26:25

Non compliance, really frustrating. I've now started calling people out for it on LinkedIn. And I will take a screenshot of your landing page and I will post it on LinkedIn cause I'm fed up with it. We, should have a level. Play playing field that is compliant, that is treating the consumer fairly. And, headline rates of, 3 percent on a secured loan, just not achievable. The Bank of England rate is, 5%, so non compliance is, really annoys me.

Paul: 26:54

That's interesting because we actually had Sarah Jane Black on the show a couple of weeks back and she's basically a consultant that goes out and helps businesses with their compliance as part of her consulting work and operations. So it's, interesting to speak to somebody who's on the receiving end of people who aren't compliant as, a follow up. And what's one thing that you, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you have more businesses start doing that would make them ultimately much more successful in terms of a market and strategy or tactic?

Lawrence 3: 27:22

Working closer with lead generators. So there, there is a view that, you put 100 leads in, we're going to get, X number of sales and that's going to happen every single week, in, week out. And unless you work really closely with the lead generator and, have a communication channel going where you go actually my top sales person left. Cause normally what we'll get a phone call and say, Oh, leads are crap this week. And you go what's happened to your site? Let's be frank. What's happened. Oh, we had a new dialer put in, or we had, a certain person leave or, it's been sunny outside in, in late September, October. Everyone's, they're not out there making the last of the summer. So we then, so that, that sort of culture of, not blaming, but, finger pointing as, such needs to be overcome and you need to be able to weather storms together. That's why I always, that's my statement. I'm going to look, that's why we have this sort of more. Pay on performance model where we're in it together. We don't get paid unless you make profit. So that's, what aligns us there.

Paul: 28:27

So I was going to sum that up, I'd probably say communication and collaboration with your close business partners, rather than dump and run and find somebody else in two to three months who's going to, because you're right, like I think relationships for marketing partners are really hard to find the good ones. There's a lot of good ones. Shady people out there, shady businesses, or just businesses who are built on, they're quite happy to have that churn because they'll just drive more leads in and churn and drive more leads and churn. They don't care about the reputation. So for those of us who do really value our reputation, when you do find us, it's a case of I can only do so much if you don't tell me what you know. And. Bringing the two worlds together. I like that. That's really useful. Thank you, Lawrence. If the guys at Hormer are interested to find out a bit more about more demand or, Emma or money saving advisors or yourself, how would we best to contact you these days?

Lawrence 3: 29:20

LinkedIn's always a good shout. Lawrence Howlett, L A W. Yeah, that's, probably the best place or visit moredemand. io. Yeah, all, the details

Paul: 29:28

Brilliant. Thanks very much for being a fantastic guest, Lawrence. Really enjoyed the conversation there.