From Order Takers To Consultants, The Sales Revolution Has Happened, Mostly
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
Release Date: 05/13/2025
AI in Google Ads, Otterly.ai & AI-Driven Agency Operations
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
Welcome back to Digital Marketing from the Coalface with Dave and Julie. In this episode, we dive deep into the rapidly shifting landscape of AI in search engines and internal operations, hopefully bringing practical insights for businesses trying to stay ahead of the curve. Whether you are navigating high-intent B2B lead generation or looking to streamline your internal tools using AI, this episode covers the tactical realities of digital marketing today. We start by sharing our early thoughts on Otterly.ai, a new tool designed to track how often your brand or website is cited in AI...
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Stop Selling "Solutions": Should Engineers Run Your Marketing? Bridging the Technical-Marketing Divide
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
Are you selling "global solutions to world-class problems"? If so, please stop. Your marketing messaging is likely confusing your buyers and costing you leads. In this episode of Digital Marketing from the Coalface, Dave and Julie dives into the marketing challenges faced by tech, industrial, and engineering companies. They explore why highly technical companies often fall into the trap of listing off features rather than focusing on the actual outcomes their clients want to buy. If your marketing materials can't pass the "So what?" test, this episode is for you. In...
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From Keywords to Vibe Coding: The AI Era of Industrial Marketing
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In this episode of Digital Marketing from the Coalface, Dave and Julie explore the breathtaking speed at which AI is transforming both marketing strategy and backend technical workflows. Both agree that traditional keyword stuffing is officially a relic of the past as search queiries get longer and more complex and search engines get smarter. But what does transitioning to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) entail, and how do B2B comapnies make sure they get cited by AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini? It might be time to learn how to shift focus toward solving...
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What Marketing Really Is And Why Engineers Get It Wrong
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In episode 164 of Digital Marketing from the Coalface, Dave and Julie cut through the online nonsense to explore what marketing actually is—and what it isn't. Fed up with self-proclaimed LinkedIn "gurus" making up their own definitions, Dave and Julie break down the fundamentals to prove that marketing is a strategic process, not just the "colouring in department". Buckle up! In this episode, we cover: The Real Definition of Marketing: The official definition and an explanation of the "Marketing Mix" (the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion). Discover why advertising, PR, and...
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The Data Stream: Optimising Video Assets for AI-Powered Search
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In this episode of "Digital Marketing from the Coalface," Dave and Leslie explore the critical shift in how AI models and AI-powered search engines process and index video content. Moving beyond simple metadata, AI models now "tokenise" video, analysing visual frames and audio streams to extract technical data and sentiment. High-fidelity video production is no longer just an "aesthetic choice" but a data integrity requirement to ensure AI accurately interprets complex products and engineering solutions. The discussion also focuses on the strategic risk of "Brand Drift" a...
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We Discuss The Power of NotebookLM & Minimising Clicks For PPC Success
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In this episode of Digital Marketing from the Coalface, Dave and Julie explore the counter-intuitive reality of B2B growth: why receiving fewer clicks often signals a healthier strategy than chasing high-volume traffic. They discuss the "Mark Kermode Effect"—a bizarre algorithmic failure where YouTube’s AI confused Dave with the famous film critic based on their glasses and grey hair, driving thousands of irrelevant views that immediately bounced. For engineering and tech leaders focused on efficiency, Julie and Dave also dive into practical applications of generative AI...
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January Blues, Skinflints, AI And General Moaning, HNY
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In the first episode of the year, Julie and Dave unpack the shifting realities of online marketing and business software. They dive into the idea of the “great decoupling,” exploring how AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT are disrupting the long-standing relationship between SEO and website traffic. The conversation also takes a critical look at AI-driven advertising, questioning its efficiency—especially for niche B2B markets where, for now, hands-on, manual management still comes out on top. The episode taps into a common frustration many businesses face: investing heavily in...
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No David, Franz Kafka Didn't Direct It's A Wonderful Life
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
We finally managed to record a new episode and we promise to properly ressurect the podcast in 2026. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our 2025 recap where we break down the seismic shifts in digital marketing that are actively reshaping how B2B buyers operate in complex sectors, including engineering, tech, renewable energy, and oil and gas. Discover how tech leaders are leveraging platforms like Claude and Gemini as highly productive coding agents for JavaScript and PHP, sounding boards for strategic planning, and tools for rapidly building minimum viable products (MVPs). We also...
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As AI & Google Keep Stealing Your Content, What Can You Do About It?
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
Are your buyers finding your complex engineering solutions through traditional search, or are AI bots intercepting their queries first? In this episode, Dave and Cam dive into the rapidly evolving landscape of digital visibility. They tackle the strategic dilemma of the modern web: should your technical documentation and web pages be written for human context, or structured as strict problem-solution data to be crawled and served by AI snippets? They also touch upon the topic of understanding how AI evaluates and uses your proprietary content, and why it is more important than ever, before...
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Cam Bores On About AI & Dave Has A Rant, Normal Service Resumed
Digital Marketing From The Coalface
In this episode Cam has more thoughts on AI and despite the title, it is moderately interesting. From deep discussions on artificial intelligence's inability to read the room to passionate rants about deceptive software pricing, the duo covers the good, the bad, and the outright manipulative sides of the digital landscape. Key Topics Covered in this Episode: Google Ads & AI Judgment: Dave and Cam discuss Google's move toward using AI to crawl landing pages and judge their relevance to determine ad quality scores. Dave and Cam question whether AI can truly understand human context and...
info_outline- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of AI: discussing the risk of using AI just to churn out high volumes of low-quality content. However, Dave and Stuart also highlight genuinely impressive tools like NotebookLM that are revolutionising content creation by turning dry source material into engaging, conversational audio. Along the way, Dave shares some laugh-out-loud AI failures, including completely fabricated quotes and a chatbot's bizarre attempt at using British slang.
- Public vs. Private Sector Bidding: Dave and Stu express their shared frustration with impersonal public sector RFPs (Requests for Proposal), where dozens of companies might blindly bid for the same small contract. They discuss the controversial trend of heavily weighting "social value" over technical and financial ability in contract scoring, and why they strongly prefer the relationship-driven, problem-solving approach of the private sector.
- The Modern Salesperson as a Consultant: In the engineering and tech spaces, the traditional sales "order taker" is becoming obsolete, as buyers now do most of their research online. The hosts explore how modern salespeople must act as problem-solving consultants, deeply understanding their organisation's capabilities to identify and solve issues clients didn't even know they had.
- The Challenge of Tech Sales: They highlight the difficulty of hiring salespeople who genuinely understand complex engineering, the risk of sales teams overpromising to clients, and why creative and technical companies must stop giving away their expertise for free just to win a bid.
- Client Wins & "Engineer Reactions": A behind-the-scenes look at a recent, highly successful rebranding project for a Somerset-based engineering client, featuring the hilariously cautious, perfectly reserved way that engineers express their excitement over creative work.