[Fully Managed] Ali White from Elliptycs Ep. 95

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Daniela: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast. This is the podcast we’re going be discussing marketing business tips, and so many other cool things to help assist you in your business journeys. I’m your host Daniela, and I’m Penji’s partnership coordinator. Today I am joined with a very special guest, a very long friend of ours, Ali White from Ellyptics.

Hi Ali, how are you?

Ali: I’m very good, thanks. How about yourself?

Daniela: I’m great. So excited to have you. I’m very excited for this episode now.

Ali: Happy to meet here. Yeah, likewise. Exciting. Yes.

About Ellyptics and Ali White

Daniela: Now to get started, to kind of break the ice a little bit, can you tell us about yourself, what you do and about Ellyptics everything so that everybody watching can get a feel of who you are and what you do?

Ali: For sure. Yeah. So started Ellyptics back in 2016. I’ve got a background myself prior to that, working for a SaaS company and used to work in-house for a marketing team before that, so started Ellyptics, which is a digital marketing agency. We very much focus on the lead generation side of things for clients, and we tend to cover quite a few different verticals, quite a few different service offerings as well.

So predominantly search engine marketing with Google ads, meta ads, SEO and so on. But we also do get involved in organic social web design and development as well. So sort of quite mixed in terms of what we do. Primarily when people come to us, they’ve got one main thing that they want to resolve, which is leads. They want more leads, better quality leads, and so that’s what our business does and helps, like I say, on quite a few different verticals across quite a few different countries as well, which is quite exciting.

Global Reach and Client Base

Daniela: That’s very interesting. What countries are you predominantly working with, with clients?

Ali: So we are mainly obviously based out of the UK. So we’re in Surrey, which is about half an hour, 45 minutes south of London, for anyone who wants the geographic reference. So most of our clients are around the UK but we’ve got clients over in the States. We’ve got clients in Italy as well. In terms of like, we’ve got a vacation rental client over there that does the most amazing villas, if you have interest in traveling to Tuscany, get some good Italian food and see some lovely sites out there. So mainly UK, but a mixed set of clients across the globe.

The TikTok Ban and Marketing Impact

Daniela: Interesting. I am asking because I am curious, you know, in America with everything that’s going on with the ban of TikTok, I think a lot of B2C companies are concerned about how that’s gonna affect marketing for them because a lot of B2C companies have begun to use TikTok with digital marketing and integrating that platform into their digital marketing strategies. I think most, a lot of companies have integrated that into their strategies. And I’m curious if something like this is going to affect your clients or if there’s a concern, even if they’re not American. I wonder if that sort of is going to affect it directly because maybe they might have an American audience or do you think that this is something that’s completely removed?

I talked to someone who was in the SaaS world yesterday. His target audience were like SaaS companies and B2B companies, and he said he wasn’t that concerned with the TikTok band. So I’m curious about how that has been for you and for your business and your clients.

Ali: For sure. So, I mean, I think a lot of our clients are slow on adopting TikTok, so from that perspective, there’s not gonna be like an immediate impact for them. But I do think at the end of the day, users are what makes these apps popular and that will drive their own success. So I think from a UK perspective, we’ve not got TikTok getting banned. But if there’s less users on the platform, the platform becomes less relevant and therefore potentially less useful in that way.

The thing I see though is the sort of like opposite point of that at the moment is where are people gonna go instead? A lot of our clients have been on other platforms like Instagram and so on for a long time. And as I’m sure you appreciate and anyone out there who’s trying to grow their presence online, trying to grow it through the, I’d say more traditional routes like Instagram, Facebook, and so on, are much, much harder than TikTok. ‘Cause on TikTok ’cause it’s very much driven by the single piece of content you put out, not your follower base. There’s the opportunity, someone I think phrased it—I’m stealing this from someone else, but I can’t remember who to give them credit—like every piece of content you put out there is effectively you’re buying a lottery ticket. And yes, it may flop, but there’s a high chance it lands as well if you put the right hook and piece of content together.

So I think from that perspective, we are not gonna see anything negative. We typically find for a lot of our clients anyway, that the main part of their growth on the lead side of things is gonna be if they’re on social platforms, it’s not gonna be through the organic social, it’s through leveraging the paid aspect of these platforms. So I think no is the answer from what we would expect. But I do think for American based businesses, it’s obviously allowed a huge amount of exposure to a number of very much your small sort of mom and pop style businesses. You know, where anyone can get their message out there and compete with massive corporates. Obviously the highly polished video edits and so on don’t actually go down as well on platforms like TikTok.

And obviously the big sort of thing that’s coming through with TikTok from an opportunity perspective is the live selling as well. So for any e-com sites out there, that was gonna be a huge thing. And I think if you’re based in the states and the band does go ahead on, is it Sunday it’s supposed to go ahead, I think.

Daniela: I think on, yeah, Sunday. The Sunday. I was just checking.

Ali: If it does go ahead, I do feel, you know, you won’t get the same. Yes. People will put more effort into other platforms because they’ll have to, but you won’t get the same momentum behind certainly won’t get the same exposure unless Meta or one of the other platforms does a fundamental change to how they’re pushing the content and how their algorithm drives stuff.

Daniela: Yeah, I mean, I like to ask this question because I’m curious about how it’s gonna affect people and businesses. I am not American, so like, personally, I’m not affected by it, but I do think it’s a big change. And it’s gonna change a lot of the way that I think I’m going to, like, if I use TikTok, I wonder how that experience is gonna be now that this huge part of the population that uses it, right? The users that are using it, how are they going to affect it?

And then I think about it in a more marketing perspective, right? Marketing wise, I think especially with B2C, I know in America TikTok shop is really big. I don’t know if they have that in the UK, so they use it a lot to drive sales. Right. So it makes me wonder if that’s going to sort of have a snowball effect on other.

Ali: Yeah, for sure. I guess it’ll be, there’ll be two sides of the coin. And for the people, it takes away from the platform, like you say, for being based in the UK for any companies that stay on it in the UK they get their voice isn’t gonna have as big an audience to resonate with because obviously if they sell to America and so on that’s going, but there’ll be less voices crowding the space over here as well. Because obviously a lot of American content, lot of American creators and businesses are selling through TikTok in the UK. So suddenly that sort of competitive element just disappears. So there’s like less market, but potentially a larger share for voices over here.

Effective Lead Generation Strategies

Daniela: Yeah, for sure. And I know that you talked about how you focus mainly on lead gen, right? Lead generation. I know that social media, like we were speaking about TikTok and all of these, like Instagram, all of these have been very big for a lot of companies for lead generation. But it’s not the answer for everybody. Right. I’d spoken to people who say that they don’t use social media for lead generation because they’re in industries that are very niche, especially like B2B, I think, they usually focus on lead generation in different ways. More like SEO approaches and that sort. What do you find is more successful with your clients? Or how have you sort of been able to navigate it? I think regardless of the business that you are in, lead generation is always something that you’re trying to figure out. No matter where you are at in your sales funnel. Right?

Ali: For sure. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for us and our clients, typically the most successful route is through search. And that’s a combination usually of search engine optimization and also paid search ads. So predominantly Google ads, ’cause obviously the majority of the share is in Google’s favor. And you know, I think the reason for that is because the intent for the consumer is there. Like they’re going to Google or whichever search engine they use to answer a question or look for the solution to their problem. And so the intent there, they’ve got the high intent ready to sort of, depending on the query and so on, but they’ve got the intent there usually to transact.

So as long as when that’s happening, a website, we try and do it for our clients, of course, comes up at the top of the results. Then hopefully the consumer navigates there, and then the website does its job to convert those users, which obviously leads into the conversion rate optimization piece, design layout and usual cues and triggers as you’d know.

Again, though, that’s like changing because we’ve got AI answers starting to come out, more and more search queries now. You know, we haven’t seen much loss in traffic for our clients at the moment. We are starting to see larger amounts of queries, like I say, have the AI answers come up for them. I think certainly everything that we understand and we’re trying to do for our clients to help position ’em in a good place. And, you know, the recommendation for anyone out there looking to position themself in that good places is to sort of follow Google’s helpful content guidelines.

So making sure that if you are putting a piece of blog content out there, that you are not just rehashing what’s already been done a number of different ways. You know, put your unique angle, your unique experience in there. And most businesses out there when they’re looking for lead gen, they’ve got a wealth of experience that they can lean on. It’s just demonstrating that and showcasing that to potential customers.

AI, Search Behaviors, and Marketing Evolution

Daniela: Yes, for sure. And I wanted to actually bring that up. You kind of jumped the gun there about AI. ‘Cause like I wanted to ask that change right about SEO, Chat GPT and all of these, I think going back to TikTok, I guess I’ve noticed that a lot of users have begun to use social media and AI for search engines, right?

Ali: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Daniela: I find myself doing that, right? Like I find myself sort of going into Instagram and then Googling like, I don’t know, a salon if I wanna cut my hair right. Like, not Googling, but I’m, I guess I’m Instagraming.

Ali: Sure. No, I know what you mean.

Daniela: And that has changed. ‘Cause I think back when we were, I guess like the 2010, early two thousands when the internet was a different place than it is right now. People would Google, right? Like that was the main search engine. And then there were some people who would use Bing and all of these other ones. But Google was, has been the main one, it still is, but all of these other platforms are being used as search engines. And like you said, AI is a really big player. And Chat GPT, I think is beginning to be a very big competitor because people are asking Chat GPT a lot of questions.

That going, like my question, and you kind of said it didn’t affect your clients. How affected you think this has changed for how you do lead generation and things like that. But I’m wondering how are you planning towards the future for it, right? Like, how are you, what do you think you’re going to do as, ’cause I feel like this is just gonna keep growing. They’re gonna come up, like we’re talking about Chat GPT right now and TikTok and Instagram and then a year from now, we’ll be talking about another app that we have no idea exists right now. Right. So, how is that, Ali, how are you managing all of these changes that are happening?

Ali: Yeah, so I mean, like I say, the AI overviews and so on aren’t taking much away at the moment. The ultimately are taking away is growing and as you said, that’s only continue from here. So that goes very much into making sure that, like I say, clients and businesses out there are putting themselves at the forefront using their expertise and knowledge because that’s the sort of area that the AI is gonna struggle to cover the most.

If it’s a general sort of roundup poster of a how to do something basic, then AI’s gonna be able to answer that. No problem. I mean, you can easily do that now if you’re going into Chat GPT, Gemini or any of the other Claude or any of the platforms, you can ask it to put together a piece of blog content for you. If the tools can do it for you now, then there’s no point in you trying to cover that topic. ‘Cause they already know how to explain it. I think very much leaning on, like I say, the firsthand experience.

From our perspective, that fits back into the actual social media side of things because we very much adopt an approach of looking at what are the questions people are going to these platforms needing solutions for, and as you said, like a lot more people are using TikTok search to find solutions. So the SEO aspect that was predominantly associated with search engines in terms of Google now actually needs to be applied to search engines like TikTok because that is what it’s becoming.

So making sure that when you are looking at answering that piece or putting together a piece of content to answer those questions, that you don’t just do it in the written form in terms of your website and a blog piece of content. How can you turn that into a great piece of video content as well? And if you’ve got an existing website with that presence, you can go and look through tools like Google Search Console and stuff like that and see what you are already ranking high for. That’s like query related things and then produce off the back of that.

So from our perspective, what we are recommending to people is to look more holistically now, not just look at the search landscape in terms of Google search and so on, but look in terms of the search landscape, in terms of TikTok and so on, and TikTok’s got ways you can actually look at how you are appearing in their search now, which is quite interesting.

I think also, you know, a change we will potentially see coming down the line, but I’m not sure what guise it will come and how it’ll come about. But at the moment, obviously Google are being taking and scraping as are all these AI tools, as much information as they can out there. Google did their tie up with Reddit and obviously that’s why Google have done that. It’s because a lot of people will go to Google and you know, you’re saying you go to TikTok looking for how to do this or Instagram how to do this, and so on. A lot of people would do a Google query, but add the word Reddit on the end because they want to see the Reddit forum results, not the actual, like what can be often junk results that appear at the top there.

So I think from that perspective, there’s gonna be some changes. But Google and these other AI platforms, they’re scraping everything up. At some point, Google are gonna have to look, I would’ve thought that rewarding creators in the same way, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms do. They all create the creator rewards programs. Once you hit a certain follower or view threshold, you can start monetizing your content. And I would think there’s gonna be something in that way that comes along with the search engines. ‘Cause otherwise people are just gonna stop producing the content if there’s no value for them.

Consumer Awareness and Trust in Marketing

Daniela: Yeah. No, and I actually feel like I wanted to ask about this. How do you feel about consumers being just more educated in general? I think back when people were on the internet still, like earlier, marketing was there, but it was a little bit more subtle. It wasn’t as in your face. And a lot of times people didn’t even realize that a marketing strategy was being used on them. Right. Would go to a search engine, and I think right now if you go to Google, I Google lasagna recipe. Right? And the first three links that are gonna pop up are gonna say, sponsored or you know, like, and so I know that the person, like the company that is trying to push this lasagna recipe on me is doing SEO and doing paid ads and like trying really hard to get that link up there when I Google lasagna, so that it’s gonna be the first one to click.

And I think like, yes, I work in marketing, but I feel like I’ve spoken to people who are aware of this without having to be marketers themselves without understanding what the search engine optimization term is. But they have this knowledge that I think consumers have a lot more nowadays. You see a lot of influencers that call themselves experts who are also telling you like all of these things about, oh, this is how you get famous, this is blah, blah, blah. And I feel like all of this stuff has made for consumers to just be a lot more aware. Right.

You’ve seen the changes of not just them being more aware, but then they’re more demanding for transparency. I constantly see controversies of either celebrities or companies who are like, you’re not transparent, like this is a lie, blah, blah, blah. How do you think that effects or in the possible future, the marketing world or the marketing sphere for companies that are trying to sort of break into SEO?

And then it’s weird because I think people don’t even trust reviews nowadays, right? Because a lot of people think that like, how do I know that you didn’t get paid to do this review. With that sort of mistrust that exists, which I think it’s really shows when you said that people will Google like Reddit because they’re gonna trust a Reddit user more, that they’re gonna trust some website because they feel like it’s more genuine and it’s a person’s opinion. I think it really affects marketing because it makes you less trustworthy inherently, regardless what you’re doing. How are you sort of preparing for that? Or what is your opinion on it, I guess your take.

Ali: Yeah, so I’m very much the same, like, same thoughts as you. And going back to like the recipe example you get like, how frustrating is it not just a sponsored results, but you click into one of those recipes and obviously in order to game the SEO system, they’ll explain this whole backstory as the grandmother coming from Italy and the backstory of pasta, just so you can tell a recipe on making lasagna or something like that.

So I think there has been that sort of like erosion of trust in that aspect. And obviously there’s been certain things that have come up. I don’t dunno if you know of like Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO. So he’s got like a massive following in the UK. He’s been on Dragons Den, which is the UK equipment Shark Tank and stuff like that. And he’s got wrapped over the knuckles for advertising a product that he’s invested in but hasn’t disclosed that investment. So he’s recently been wrapped over the numbers of that. So there’s a lot of like transparency related stuff that’s come out.

I think it’s gonna get like, in some ways worse because we’ve now got, I can’t remember the name of the brand, but one of the brands, I think it’s Mango, has started AI influencers now, so I think like the transparency thing becomes even more blurred. But to your point, that’s why video content, in addition to broad content and putting that sort of like first party perspective is so powerful because anyone can grab a camera now, and it doesn’t matter if you’re doing it on something, I’ve got a little DJI Osmo camera I’m recording on here, or whether you’re doing it on your iPhone or whatever it be.

But seeing the actual people behind the businesses and seeing what’s going on and being part and being involved. Once people get a better understanding of who they’re shopping from, who they’re looking at doing business with, they’re much more likely to get that trust element. And that’s really going back to what I was talking about earlier when I was talking about helpful content from Google, that software guidelines. And Google brought out a while back there, their E signals, EAT, which became EEAT, for expertise, authoritative, trustworthy type signals that they’re looking at.

And in the written content looks, things like, has it got an author’s bio on the article? And who is that author and what’s their credibility? And if it’s a general website, like for example, talking about lasagna, why are they suddenly writing a piece of content to do with something to do with medical history or that sort of like, is so disjointed they shouldn’t be in the same place.

And I think from a marketing perspective, that’s why any brands and businesses out there that can showcase more of what is, what they are, what’s going on behind the scenes, why they’ve made these decisions. People love to follow that journey and see the sort of like warts and all of it. And I think for businesses that can showcase that, they’ll see such better, such a better trajectory on their growth because like you say, there’s so much faceless stuff out there, and there’s so much manipulative behavior out there from not just brands in terms of how they operate.

Usual things like all those dark patterns where all websites, they’ll do things like 10 People have been looking at this over the past five minutes when that’s not the case. You can see in the source code half the time it’s just a randomizer that’s giving a number out. It’s not actually data off the back of who’s looking at it. So people, I think, are done with all that. People want to see more and, and I think, like I say, brands that can showcase that are gonna do so much better moving forward.

Authenticity, Ethics, and Business Culture

Daniela: Also, I think like there’s like a, I’ve noticed there’s a demand for, I guess, I don’t know if the word is authenticity, moral high ground. I don’t know. That’s, that sounds bad, but I…

Ali: No, I can go to authenticity works. Yeah. I, I agree with you.

Daniela: Yeah. I think people have demanded a lot of ethical branding or aging of a business. You were talking about the CEO that was in a scandal, and I remember I saw like a few months ago, maybe a couple months ago, like not that long ago, that on Dragons Den in Canada, they had an issue because these two people showed up. They were trying to sell like a boba drink. And then they got called out for being insensitive because they were not sort of, I think the way that they presented like their pitch and then the opinion of the business people who were thinking about investing.

Like they got a lot of backlash from the community once the episode came out, to the point where one of the people that had invested in them said that she was gonna pull out and she was not gonna invest anymore because they were not being culturally sensitive. And then that lady ended up still getting criticized ’cause they were like, you are just doing that because you got canceled, but you would’ve invested in them otherwise. And I think it just went to show like, I think that wouldn’t have happened before, you know?

Ali: Yeah. For sure.

Daniela: It’s a huge change. Like I think a few years back, not even maybe like 10, 15 years back, like a company like this wants to start and it looks trendy and the product is good and it’s a tasty drink and that’s it. That’s that. Nobody cares about who’s behind it. And nowadays it’s like, there’s a lot more that comes to it where like the story of the company was a huge deal.

Ali: A hundred percent. And I think, like you say, people are fed up of having these sort of like corporations just, or CEOs or whoever it be, just take the mick, you know, like the end of the day. I think there’s not gonna be an overreaction in a lot of circumstance to many things, but people do want to understand behind the scenes and like, say, understand if it’s a product, where the materials sourced from, what’s going on? How are people treating their workers? And all those bits and bobs. Because, you know, again, that’s a big thing, like what’s happening with the employees behind the scenes as well. How are they looked after, how are they treated?

And I think I can’t talk in global market terms, but certainly from the UK’s perspective, I think this current year for the UK is gonna be a tough business trading year. I really do. I think we’re already seeing for a lot of businesses struggles, where for example, like biking as in cycling was hitting a huge boom a number of years ago. There’s a bike shop opposite, there’s been in the town for ages that’s just shut their doors. I think it’s gonna be tough trading for a number of different reasons. And with that in mind, there’s gonna be a close eye watched on how businesses react and how they sort of like portray themselves moving forwards.

Tourism and Market Changes in El Salvador

Daniela: It’s happening in El Salvador, something similar is happening here. I think we have a lot of changes with the business world because tourism is growing. We’ve never had tourism here. Like, you know, we’ll get like a couple of people coming every like, once in a while. But we also don’t have tour. Like the tourism industry hasn’t been very big and I think since we’ve gotten elected, like the new president, we’ve also had the tourism industry growing ’cause he’s been investing a lot of it in it and it’s really affecting the way that businesses are growing and changing. ‘Cause at the same time that it’s growing, it’s also killing a lot of like smaller businesses.

And a lot of like foreign big corporations are coming here and setting up like big hotels and like resorts and like surfing is really big, so they’ll just have like a lot of like surfing stuff going on. And I think it’s really, really changing how the sphere is handled. A lot of people are having to start to learn basic English because all of a sudden all of these like spots are filled with tourists who speak only English. And you know, people here don’t really speak English. And I think like that gentrification is really starting to sort of change how the market is being operated in. And some things are kind of like struggling while some of them are. It’s a very big change as well. So something similar I think in a different font.

But, the changes happening and I think it’s gonna be this year. I mean, the president said he was gonna do a lot of changes. I don’t know if he’s actually going to do it, but if that happens, people are gonna have to sort of like, change a lot of the way that they handle their own business.

Ali: Yeah, no, I completely, totally get it. And in Europe as well, like there’s been a lot of that, there was a lot of that in Spain. The tourism issues earlier this year. Or earlier end of last year, should I say, where obviously things like house prices and so on and locals wanting to be able to live in what has now become densely populated tourist areas with lots of rentals on the likes of Airbnb and so on. There’s been a big reaction to it. So I think, yeah, that’s, can see more of that, more of that as well in 2025.

Daniela: Yeah, I mean, I guess that was a bit of a tangent, but you kind of just reminded me of it with everything that you were talking about, the cycling business. ‘Cause I think it’s just kind of happening all the time. Like the world’s just moving like this nowadays. Or maybe it was moving really fast before and I just never noticed. It just feels like everything is really happening all the time. Right.

Ali: I think there’s a lot of variables. I mean, I think you obviously you’ve got things like inflation’s creeping up everywhere at the moment. Everyone’s trying to wrestle with interest rates. Are they gonna continue cutting them or are they gonna keep them the same? I think, yeah, as a general sort of like trading side of things. The flip side to that bizarrely though is you look at like some of the massive, like Magnificent Seven, in the US your Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, all of them, their stocks are trading at all time high.

So like, there’s also, I feel like this weird disconnect between what sort of seems to be happening from a reported perspective, but what’s actually happening in local businesses, both in the UK and abroad.

Daniela: Yeah, I mean. I don’t know. I mean, Donald Trump being elected is also certainly going to change. A lot of the stuff that happens in America affects the rest of the world just because, you know, America is such a big country.

Closing and Contact Information

Daniela: Before we finish Ali, I want to give you the space to tell all of our followers and our viewers and our listeners, if anything that we spoke about today resonated with them. And they would like to work with you. Anybody from the UK, even if they’re not American based or wherever they are. The floor is yours to tell them where to go.

Ali: Yeah, for sure. Thank you very much. So yeah, if anyone wants to talk about how we can potentially help with their lead generation and with the help with their lead generation, they’re looking to get their website reads presence on or Google improved so they’re ranking more highly and getting more traffic and more leads through the business. Feel free to go to our website, Ellyptics.co.uk. You are also welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m Ali White at Ellyptics. So yeah, just feel free to connect with me. Have a conversation, see where you are at, see what’s going on, and see how we can potentially work with you to help improve your leads.

Daniela: Awesome. Yeah, and I will have the links to all of this in the description of the video. For anybody watching in the listeners go to the video. Thank you so much for doing this today, Ali.

Ali: Likewise. It was great. Great chatting to you. Thanks very much for your time.

Daniela: Thank you everyone. I’ll see you on the next episode.

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