Last week at a UK business fair, our Managing Director, Mike McKinlay, delivered a talk that cut straight to the heart of what’s happening in digital marketing today. It wasn’t wrapped in jargon. It wasn’t theoretical. It was simple, direct and grounded in experience.
As Mike put it:
“I built my first agency on one message: I’ll build your website and I’ll make you money.”
Mike’s first agency, Creare, grew from zero to £12 million, employed 180 staff and was eventually sold to private equity. After launching Pod Digital in 2016, Mike expected the industry to settle.
Instead, he realised:
“I thought digital had had its day. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
Today, the industry is shifting faster than ever. It’s driven by AI automation, AI search, intelligent data and a new level of transparency that businesses now expect.
The Dinosaur Analogy: Why Survival Favours the Adaptable
One of Mike’s most memorable moments came when he compared today’s marketing landscape to the extinction of the dinosaurs:
“The big ones died, and the little ones didn’t because they were adaptable. Survivors aren’t the most dominant. They’re the most efficient.”
Think of the last few decades of business history as a series of very loud warnings.
Yellow Pages was once the bible of local discovery. Everyone used it. Every business relied on it. However, when search engines arrived, Yellow Pages didn’t adapt. They sold their entire database to Google for just £50,000. A giant, reduced to a footnote.
Similarly, Blockbuster had Netflix knocking on the door, offering partnership opportunities. They laughed it off. They believed their model was untouchable until it wasn’t. In the end, one store survived out of 9,000.
Then there’s old-school Google SEO tactics, the keyword stuffing era, the directory submission era and the “we’ll trick the algorithm” era. Those tactics worked… until Google evolved. Some agencies evolved with it. Others didn’t.
And we’ve all seen whole industries go the same way. Travel agents. Classifieds. High-street retail. Print media. Businesses that clung to the past instead of embracing what was next.
The pattern is painfully simple:
If you protect the past, you risk extinction.
If you adapt early, you survive.
If you evolve fast, you lead.
That’s the point Mike drove home. The winners aren’t the biggest any more, they’re the ones that move first.
Mike’s point was clear: Agencies that stay still won’t survive the next wave of digital transformation.
The New Agency Model: Human Expertise + AI Efficiency
Pod Digital still excels in the pillars of digital, SEO, PPC, web design and social, but the delivery model has changed.
Traditional agencies rely heavily on human hours. Mass manual work. Limited scale. High overheads.
As Mike explained:
“AI has reduced our delivery costs by 60 to 70%. We’ve reduced overhead by 30%. But instead of pocketing it, we’ve passed that value straight back to our clients.”
That shift means:
- Faster delivery
- Higher quality
- Lower cost
- More strategic work for specialists
- An account manager can support 40 to 50 clients instead of 10
And the biggest impact?
“AI doesn’t replace agencies. It replaces inefficiency.”
AI Search: The Biggest Land Grab Since Google
Mike didn’t mince his words on how quickly user behaviour is changing:
“Google feels like an old Nokia to me right now. I hardly use it at all.”
Users now turn to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for product discovery, advice, problem-solving and decisions. But these platforms work differently from Google:
- They reward depth, not keywords
- They rely on personas and problems, not queries
- They need diverse content types, not just text
- They require a clear knowledge base and brand identity
Mike summed it up perfectly:
“AI may know how to tap, but experience knows where to tap.”
To win in AI search, brands need:
- A structured knowledge hub
- Mixed-format content (PDFs, videos, data, FAQs, transcripts)
- Strong brand DNA
- Truly helpful, first-party expertise
Black-hat shortcuts won’t survive AI. Real value will.
Data, Attribution and the BS Filter
One of the most compelling parts of the talk was Mike’s breakdown of attribution and how often agencies get it wrong.
He shared a story about a hair transplant clinic obsessed with “leads, leads, leads”. They had turned off profitable campaigns and scaled unprofitable ones simply because they judged success by volume, not revenue.
Mike introduced his favourite term for this:
“The BS filter. I’m not interested in vanity metrics. I want to know: am I making you money?”
With full-funnel attribution, Pod Digital proved:
- A campaign with 1,887 leads was barely profitable
- A campaign with only 215 leads made significantly more money
- Google was over-valuing form submissions and under-valuing phone calls
- Phone calls converted 7x higher than forms
When the client saw the real revenue data, the decision was obvious, and Pod Digital won the account.
Business GPT: The Future of Intelligent Companies
One of the reveals that turned heads was Pod Digital’s upcoming platform: Business GPT.
Mike described it as:
“A system where a CEO can talk to their business. Ask anything: cash flow, stock levels, staff attendance, customer value and get the answer in seconds.”
Business GPT will sit across a company’s systems, unify silos and turn raw data into decisions.
It’s the next stage of intelligent automation, and it’s nearly ready.
Telephone AI: Fixing the Biggest Leak in Every Business
Pod Digital has also launched a suite of Telephone AI tools designed to fix one of the biggest and most expensive problems in marketing: poor call handling.
The three products are:
Telephone AI Answer
Telephone Answer answers missed calls, takes payments and books appointments.
Telephone AI Outbound
Use Telephone AI Outbound to call leads back at the right time, often evenings, dramatically improving conversion rates.
Telephone AI Train
Telephone AI Train listens to every call, identifies missed opportunities and creates personalised 30-minute training sessions.
As Mike said:
“I’m not interested in being paid for failure. If my work generates the call, I want to make sure it’s answered.”
Shared Risk, Shared Reward: A New Performance Model
Mike closed the talk with a bold offer that very few agencies would dare make:
“If we don’t make you money, don’t pay us.”
Pod Digital now runs two options:
1. AI-Enhanced Standard Services
Affordable, transparent SEO, PPC, social and web; faster and more efficient thanks to AI.
2. Full-Performance Partnership
A complete, all-in service where Pod covers everything: website, PPC, social, content, video, with no extra fees. Fees are tied directly to results.
It’s a partnership, not outsourcing.
Evolve, or Decline
Mike wrapped up his talk with the same spirit he started with:
“The future belongs to agencies that combine intelligence, experience and shared accountability for performance.”
AI isn’t here to replace marketers. It’s here to amplify the ones who adapt.
Become a Telephone AI Reseller with Pod Digital
We’re also opening up Telephone AI to a small group of reseller partners. So if you run a digital agency, consultancy, SaaS platform, MSP or call-centre operation, we’d love to talk. If you want to add AI telephony to your offering without building the tech yourself, we’re open to partnering with you.
As a Telephone AI partner, you can sell our Answer, Call and Train + Score products under your own brand. You’ll earn recurring revenue on every active client. On top of that, you get full access to dashboards, training, onboarding and sales collateral so you can go to market quickly and confidently.
If you’re interested in becoming a reseller of the Telephone AI suite, get in touch with the team. We’ll walk you through how the partnership works and what it could look like for your clients.
Are you Ready to Evolve Your Digital Strategy?
Ready to see what AI-powered marketing, intelligent attribution and a performance-driven digital marketing strategy could do for your business?
Whether you want to improve your SEO, scale your PPC, optimise for AI search, or explore a full shared-risk partnership, our team is here to help you grow. We will do it transparently, efficiently and with total accountability.
Book a discovery call with Pod Digital today. Let’s build the next stage of your growth together.
Thank you to everyone who joined us at The London Business Show, we appreciate you all! See you next year – Pod Digital Marketing.
