Improve Your Workflow Episode 06 with Trent Phillips
matthew.barlocker
30 August 2019Trent Phillips is the Technical Service Manager at Supple, a digital marketing agency that specialises in SEO.
Learn more about Supple:
- Supple: https://supple.com.au/
- Supple Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SuppleDigital/
- Supple LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/supplesolutions
- Supple Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuppleDigital/
- Supple Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SuppleDigital/
- Trent Phillips LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trent-phillips/
Products and software mentioned in the show:
- Google Analytics: https://analytics.google.com
- SEM rush: https://www.semrush.com
- WordPress: https://wordpress.com
- Google: https://www.google.com
Automotive and energy company mentioned in the show:
- Tesla: https://www.tesla.com
Transcript of Improve Your Workflow podcast with Trent Phillips of Supple
Voiceover:
Welcome to the 'Improve Your Workflow' Podcast, brought to you by Digital Pigeon. Learn from other creative and media businesses about attracting more work, delivering projects efficiently, getting paid on time and everything in between.
Paul Evans:
Hi, there, and welcome to the sixth episode of Improve Your Workflow. My name is Paul Evans, and I'm your host. The format for this show is really simple. I interview owners and managers of media, marketing and creative businesses about their productivity and operations hacks as a way where we can all learn from each other and hopefully make our lives that little bit easier. Our guest today is Trent Phillips of Supple. Welcome to the show, Trent.
Trent Phillips:
Thank you for having me, Paul.
Paul Evans:
Not a problem. Could you tell the listeners what you do and who you do it for?
Trent Phillips:
Absolutely. So, as I said, my name is Trent. I'm a service manager at Supple. Basically I look after clients' questions, any issues, inbound calls, try to basically bridge the gap between the business and the client and alleviate work from the very busy SEO team as much as possible.
Paul Evans:
Yeah, cool. And what type of clients does Supple have?
Trent Phillips:
A very, very wide range. So, lots of small to medium businesses. We've got a lot of dentists, a lot of optometrists, and we've got a lot of trades. We've got automotive, very, very wide range. There isn't any restrictions or anything like that. We've got specialists in pretty much all industries and professional copywriters that are across pretty much every industry that we've come across so far.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Right. Okay. Very cool. What would you say is your number one productivity hack, especially in your role, which is obviously the go-between.
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, absolutely. I'd say I'm pretty OCD. I've tried out a few different apps and things like that, but basically, if I was going to give anyone a tip, it would be to create a list for yourself. For me, I like physical lists. I've got about three in front of me, one personal, one work, and just one random one of scribbles.
Paul Evans:
So, handwritten notes.
Trent Phillips:
Yeah. Yeah. Correct.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Cool.
Trent Phillips:
That's probably the main one I use. Also flagging emails and getting to them when you've got a bit of time, rather than breaking up your day, answering every email. As they come in, flag them, define what's important and then address them when you've got a bit of time and can clearly reply.
Paul Evans:
Is that like batching them all together? So, doing all the replies in one hit?
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, yeah, correct. That's probably saved me a fair bit of time.
Paul Evans:
Yeah, I do that. I think that's a Tim Ferriss sort of hack from...
Trent Phillips:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I heard [Crosstalk] You're right. Yep.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Cool. All right. Could you tell us a bit about the tech stack you use to help get your job done?
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, sure. So, basically the tech guys, they more use all these things. So I do use Google analytics to check traffic and things like that. SEMrush, I don't personally use as much, but the team definitely does. WordPress massively. We have a lot of tools on our website that we use a lot. So if you go onto supple.com.au, there's a bunch of tools available to analyze your website, create short links to Google reviews, which is a massive thing in this day and age. So, if you've got... It'll generate like a QR code, which you don't have to have a QR app on your phone or anything like that. You just have to have the camera onto the QR code. It'll bring you straight to the review link. We found the clients really liked that because it makes their customers... It's super easy to leave reviews and obviously that's a big part, the social validation for small to medium businesses. People take reviews on very, very much in this day and age.
Paul Evans:
Absolutely, yes. Something we've been working on a lot as well is generating reviews, Google, and a few software providers. So, that QR code, is that for physical businesses or is that for...
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, as long as they've got an address, actually we can actually generate it even if they don't have an address-
Paul Evans:
Google.
Trent Phillips:
...but as long as you have a listing on Google My Business, we can generate a code. If there are any issues or anything like that, you can reach out and we'll be able to generate one manually anyway.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. We might just take a few seconds now just to hear a word from our sponsor.
Voiceover:
This episode is brought to you by Digital Pigeon. Digital Pigeon is the leading file sharing service for creative and media businesses that can't afford to miss deadlines. With a focus on moving large files from A to B quickly and reliably, Digital Pigeon is the tool you can count on where others fail to deliver. Try Digital Pigeon out for free today at www.digitalpigeon.com/workflow for an extra long 90-day trial. Now, back to the show.
Paul Evans:
All right. So Trent, if you could work with one brand that you don't already work with, who would that be and why?
Trent Phillips:
That is a good question. I did have a bit of a think about this. Obviously we work with Google, which is the main business that we want to work with and impress and go along the guidelines and everything. Personally I would like to work with Tesla.
Paul Evans:
Yeah, okay.
Trent Phillips:
I guess, first of all, I've always loved cars and motorsport and things like that. I find their cars or their technology to be really futuristic and forward thinking and things like that. It's taken me a while to, I guess, look into it and I'd really love to, especially have a drive of one of their cars, but that would be... Yeah. I've heard some things from a few friends that have driven one and, yeah, it sounds pretty impressive.
Paul Evans:
They're pretty quiet, I imagine, running on a battery.
Trent Phillips:
Yeah. Yeah. That's the only thing I don't like about them to be honest, because I was driving up to the mountain on the weekend and I was thinking, if an animal, if I was driving a Tesla and an animal wouldn't be able to hear me coming and they just jumped out in front and then they...
Trent Phillips:
...the automatic brakes to turn on. And I was like, "I don't know how I'd feel about that."
Paul Evans:
Yeah, that's a really good point. I've never thought of that. That lack of noise. Yeah.
Paul Evans:
Oh.
Trent Phillips:
Only downside I can think of.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Okay. So I feel like this question, you're obviously going to say Google because you're an SEO, but, how do you go about solving problems that you don't know the answer to? Is there a specific blogs or do you use mentors or...
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, absolutely. I guess I'm lucky enough to work with some great supersmart analysts and development guys, project managers, et cetera. So anything I can't answer, I got a team around me that can get the answer for me, and if they can't get it, they know somebody who can. I haven't come across a question that, at least a client has come to me for, and I haven't been able to answer, which is again, big part of my job and I definitely want to make sure that all the questions get answered.
Trent Phillips:
Yeah, sure. Obviously the Supple website, so S-U-P-P-L-E supple.com.au, LinkedIn, which is just LinkedIn/Trent-Phillips, P-H-I-L-L-I-P-S, Facebook. Obviously we've got Supple on Facebook and Instagram, or you can call 1-300-SUPPLE, which is 1-300-787753, and, yeah.
Trent Phillips:
Easy done, Paul. Thanks very much for having me.
Paul Evans:
Perfect. All right. Thanks for being on the show, Trent.
Paul Evans:
Yeah. Cool. All right, last one. Where can our listeners connect with you?
Paul Evans:
Not a problem. Thanks for the insights there. Trent. I'm also a lover of those lists and I love batching those emails, but probably my key takeaway from this was for all you small creative businesses listening to the show is focus on Google reviews, they're absolutely vital to your SEO ranking. And just, when someone Googles your brand name, they're the first thing that come up on that right hand side, so make sure you focus on those Google reviews.
All right guys, thanks for listening, and until next time, keep on delivering.
Voiceover:
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