Tim Knowles
Websites, marketing strategy and AI training
What will you do for me?
I build websites. I plan each one, write it with Tanya, build it, and then train you to run it yourself.
Tanya and I also work out your marketing strategy together, and I deliver it. I also run AI training and workshops, plus group training with Tanya.
How did you learn marketing?
By doing it. In 2000 I was teaching web design at the University of Salford, in England, while working as a marketing assistant at a software company. Google was still the new search engine, and plenty of people asked Jeeves instead.
I have no formal marketing qualification. What I do have is a habit of going deep on a subject before I advise anyone on it. I learn it again when it changes. AI is changing search now, which is why so much of what I write lately is about how AI decides which businesses to name.
Why do you ask the customers first?
One of my clients was a telecoms company whose marketing was all over the place. Every channel looked and sounded different. We wanted to survey their customers, and the telco pushed back. We got the surveys done in the end.
The new marketing was built on what those customers told us, with one design and one voice on every channel. Fewer customers left, because the marketing described what they'd actually get. More people signed up, too. If your marketing isn't working, the answer is usually sitting with your customers.
Brisket, with notes
Away from work I cook American barbecue on a smoker, and smoked brisket is my favourite. I built an AI skill that treats every cook like a science experiment: a baseline, then one factor changed at a time. In the quiet hours by the fire, it asks me barbecue trivia.
It's the most useful thing I've built with AI. That says something about where AI helps most: on a job you already do, and already care about.
Baking, since I was seven
I've baked since I was seven, and I've worked in professional kitchens. One day I'd like to run a French-style patisserie. For now, baking is what I do away from the desk.
I used to give sourdough starter away, then spend an hour explaining what to do with it. A neighbour said I should just teach a class. Tanya put up one Facebook post, and the response was far bigger than either of us expected. About three years on, every class books out and more than 500 people have been through them.
I write about bread at The Sourdough Code. Giving away the starter was the easy part. The hour afterwards was the bit that mattered, and I think about that every time I hand over a website.
Who else will I deal with?
Tanya. That Facebook post is a fair example of what she does: social media is her expertise, and she knows what people will actually respond to. We share the copywriting and the design. We've been married for more than 15 years and worked together for 18.
Posts by Tim
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