The Future of SEO & Digital Marketing Explained (James Dooley Chats With Craig Campbell)

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 in the AI era?

Craig Campbell: I personally think uh data is a big big key part of it. You know, obviously with AI, people have built their own scrapers and utilizing data and then retargeting 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, uh, and and, you know, retargeting people on Facebook or whatever it's going to be. Um, so I kind of see things being a bit more not relying solely in organic traffic to be honest. Um, and I think even yourself probably subconsciously over the years is always just looking at other things whether you invest more in pay-per-click. I know you do a lot of lead genen. Um, and you'll be able to tell better than me because I don't do lead genen as such. I know pay-per-click works for for one of my ecom websites and I I get a massive return on investment on it because it's quite a niche market. But I think even for guys like you who are doing lead genen, if you can spend X and make Y back doing, you know, wherever you get your data from or, you know, retargeting people and everything else, it's a 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.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I tell you something like that, not many people know that majority of my profit is made in in uh PPC.

Craig Campbell: Yeah.

James Dooley: 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 pound and get 30 pound back, I'm going to be spending 10 grand 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 a domain, if you're known as being the premium brand, you can't really start going after like cheap keywords.

Craig Campbell: Yeah.

James Dooley: And stuff like that. Or affordable 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 go after everything.

Craig Campbell: Yeah.

James Dooley: And you're going, okay, I I will scoop it all up. So I think for me, not 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 that's out there. The age demographic is 55 plus. So social media is not that great. We'd love to do more Tik Tok and and stuff because 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 core ads, you know, for getting cheap traffic and all that kind of stuff because there wasn't as many people doing that at the time. But obviously, everyone now jumping into Facebook and Google and obviously the costs are rising for it. And 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, what happens if I spend 20 grand, am I going to get 40 back? And and you know, I'll double down on that. And I just can't be bored. I'll I mean, I'll still do SEO and and all that kind of stuff, but you just can't you get slapped about all over the place. and uh 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 including yourself are are feeding the LLM 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 month on month. But um you got to be looking at other anything else you can get your dirty hands on whether it's free paid or holistic whatever. And you know something else uh you mentioned prior to recording there even just building an email list people not doing that stuff it's mad.

James Dooley: Yeah I think the offline if you can try and take people offline that you warm that email list. Yeah. The issue is if you're building up let's say social media like the Twitter profile and the Facebook

Craig Campbell: you're one bad move away of having that profile just being deleted.

James Dooley: Yeah. Do

Craig Campbell: you know what I mean? And at that point you don't own 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.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Craig Campbell: So for that point of purpose it's like can can you try and get their email get the CRM and been nurturing them and stuff like that. Plus also you'll note yourself like we're both hungry for traffic. Yeah. And trying to get people to come through to our landing pages. The minute you have an email list and then you can go and send a podcast out like this to the email list or you've got a product or a special offer Black Friday and 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

James Dooley: to absolutely huge. It's mad because when I launched a YouTube video for example, one of the first things I would do would 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 after push notifications for years. 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.

Craig Campbell: 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 KGM 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 mulch that you kind of have around because 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 obviously data and surveys to it and stuff like that then even better doing trying to do that information gain 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 in going do you know what I want to build this out? I you know it certainly wasn't some weird vision where I went ah this is the way it's going due pure luck you know I followed and I think you followed him as well Matthew Woodward at the time when I had the agency and doing all the client stuff and he was the kind of affiliate guy building his personal brand and traveling the world and going to the conferences and all that he was that guy and I was jealous of it I'm like and he's living the dream and I'm you know basically bending over and getting pumped by clients up the back sides 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 went in. It was obviously a slow transition to to making more money doing affiliate and you can off the the client work. So, he was a guy I followed and obviously my website cartoon logo, his handy cartoon logo with, you know, and all that stuff. So he was a big uh inspiration for me going you've got what and I don't get jealous of it. I'm like 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. uh the the agency just because it's stressful and all that stuff. So he was the the main reason for it and then obviously from there the opportunities that come from it and you'll know that as well with your YouTube and everything you're getting people going can I work with you can I do this and it just creates other opportunities and you're like ah I'm going to double down on this now and obviously I've seen you do that and 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 like it's kind of just naturally all kind of work for me and yeah, I'm still hanging on.

James Dooley: I think another massive one for the future of digital marketing for me is social media

Craig Campbell: 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 Tik Tok or doing it from your Tik Tok to your Twitter and to your Facebook. So, you're kind of building up across the board.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Craig Campbell: 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 a 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. 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. No, absolutely. Like YouTube's been good for both of us. Uh I don't particularly do that much in Twitter. I'm not really doing much in LinkedIn. Although I've got a decent following on there, they're not something I'm pushing hard enough and I'm aware that I probably should do more on that. And I think again going forwards, uh, you know, you're going to need to double down in all of that kind of stuff. And really work them very very well. But YouTube's always been more favourable for me and I enjoy that more than sitting writing tweets and going off going on here and get a Barney now. So certain platforms I enjoy but again there's traffic in all of them. So I think you know anyone that's out there that's doing digital marketing I think got to exploit them for everything we can.

Craig Campbell: Yeah for sure. So anyone 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 authorship or doing podcasting like this is the future? Be interesting to hear your thoughts in the comments section. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.