Internet Marketing Consulting

Archive for the ‘Marketing Thoughts’ Category

I am always amazed by how often experts, or people who claim to be experts, will use their knowledge to take advantage of a situation when dealing with clients or potential clients. This is especially true in the IT industry.  I suspect I may not be making friends after that statement, but I became a Certified Programmer Analyst in 2000 specifically for that reason. I got tired of bringing quality Internet based solutions to business owners or managers only to have the “resident expert” start rattling off in IT jargon about how they could offer a better solution than my company in a language that the manager and I could not understand nor question.

I have been involved in sales and marketing for over 30 years. I always believed it was my job to find people with problems and provide them with solutions to those problems at an affordable price. Ultimately they would get the results they were looking for and I would get paid and possibly a referral or testimonial to boot.  Many salespeople in the SEO industry don’t seem to get that. I encountered two situations today that inspired me to write this post.

The first one involves an email I received from one of my recently acquired clients who is struggling right now with a poorly designed website. It is not performing well on the search engines.  While he does have some access to update his content, he has no access to the navigation, meta-data or  page titles on his site  and that can greatly impact its performance. I am mentoring him on SEO and he is realizing his choice of website developer, web host and domain name provider (he paid an “expert” to do all these things for him) was not the best.

He contacted a professional SEO company to get a second opinion about what I was telling him.  The “expert” in this organization suggested he get another web development company, one that he recommended, to build him another industry based website. After that he suggested my client hire him for $400 to $1000 per month to optimize the site promising to have him on page one of Google in about 4 months.  So why am I upset? Because every SEO company I encounter uses this technique to take a drowning man out of the water, and then throw him right back in after emptying his pockets.

What should an SEO company do in this case?

1. Help the client determine what keywords will be most effective in getting qualified visitors to the website through in depth research.
2. Make certain that the client is getting a website that is designed to be SEO friendly.
3. Suggest a web developer who builds Content  Managed Systems (CMS)  that allow the client to modify the site including adding new pages with effective page titles, meta tags, navigation and content development instead of templates designed for only one industry.
4. Assist the client in researching competitor sites that perform well in the search engines in selected key word searches.
5. Assist the client developing search engine friendly content.

Situation two was similar but it involved an “expert” SEM company whose focus was Pay Per Click ( sponsored) website marketing. I spoke directly with their representative who contacted me via spam. He claimed his company had a special affiliation with Google and Yahoo and that they could guarantee their clients the first 3 positions in the sponsored ads for Google, Yahoo and MSN.

When I asked him the price for this he said it would depend on the keywords I wanted to be searched and that prices would be set by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Hmmm…isn’t that what happens when you register for a Pay Per Click program? Only this company wanted to set a monthly rate …say $1000 to $2000 per month to keep me in the top spot.

Seems to me if I just bid higher than all my competition, I could get into the number one spot, and if nobody clicked on my ads, I could stay there for free. Of course that isn’t the goal but you get my point.

You see, it isn’t about guarantes and set fees. It about trial and error, test and measure, educate yourself and learn the game.

These guys are not treating the people who are baffled by all the internet and IT jargon like good customers who deserve the best service possible. They are treating them like suckers that need to be taken advantage of.

I recently attended an Internet Marketing seminar here in Calgary which included  an excellent lunch. It was presented in a meeting room attached to a prominent Calgary hotel restaurant. Allow me to state that the presentation by David West of eKzact Solutions Inc. was very informative and well received by the attendees.

On the other hand,  the venue for the seminar was not appreciated by the guests as the comment sheets collected after the presentation clearly showed. There were 2 obvious concerns that the attendees pointed out and both could have been easily avoided by the restaurant staff if they had simply taken the time and initiative to pay attention to the clues being  offered by the individuals seated around the table.

Like many restaurants I have been to, they were playing loud music in the background to create some sort of ambiance that one would hope was designed to give the main room an appealing atmosphere. I love music and always enjoy having some in the background when I am eating. It is a welcome distraction when conversation ebbs or I am alone with no one to talk to.  However, it is a disruption when it is too loud or the beat inappropriate for the  majority of the clientele. I can’t recall the last time I was out to dinner and the diners jumped up and started dancing  wildly between the tables to some  rock ‘n’ roll song or rap music instead of enjoying the food and quiet conversation. I have been to more than a few restaurants where the music and the volume are obviously selected to satisfy the tastes of the young waiters and waitresses  with no regard to the patrons who pay their wages and tips.

The largest number of customers were in the back room area  attending the seminar and several complaints were made with requests to turn down the music resulting in a token response which was rectified later when the 12:00 lunch crowd of 8 to 10 guests arrived and the volume  increased to previous levels.  The result was that often the seminar attendees had trouble hearing the presentation. I am amazed that no serious consideration was given to the fact that seminar presenters will often return bringing guests who may also return if the food and atmosphere are satisfactory. This is the basis of simple referral marketing.

Even worse was the fact that the serving of the food was also a major distraction. I have presented lunch and learn seminars myself where the staff delivered the food to the guests so efficiently that I barely noticed they were in the room. They had  a system of delivering the meals as ordered without interrupting  the speaker or the recipient beyond the time it takes to place the food on the table.  This system was not complicated.  It consisted of 3 steps.

1. Provide each guest with a menu/order form that they could mark their lunch selection on in advance.
2. Number the order forms to match a chair location when collecting them.
3. Deliver the requested food to the guest seated in the numbered location that matched the order form.

How brilliant is that?

This simple system was not applied at this venue.  Only step 1 was used. After that was chaos. The waiter wandered from seat to seat bringing food to people who didn’t order it, disturbing them and the presenter  asking people if this was their selection or who had ordered the meal.  He tried to go on memory and failed. He actually told the presenter after the seminar that the guests had changed seats.

Whether you use marketing systems, customer service systems or  tracking systems, the easiest way to guarantee success is to duplicate processes that have proven effective and keep them simple.

The key is that Success in Business is based upon applying  easy to use systems  and tracking the results to confirm the results.