SEO childs play – or not?
February 1st, 2010 - News
Having written recently about spammy SEO offers, we were interested in a recent letter we received by post. Written in the style of a child’s letter (including spelling mistakes) purporting to come from a 5 year old, it questioned why the SEO company hadn’t been able to find us in the Google search results, and had had to rely on our address details:
“I said daddy why do they have a website if i cant find them on the internet? even I know how important google search is and im not even six years old yet.”
I probably shouldn’t have read any more here, and just consigned the letter to the bin, as a casual view of our site stats shows us ranking well for many of our search terms, so the author had clearly not seen our site or done any homework. However the tone of the whole letter was much worse even than this, the premise being that even a 5 year old knows the importance of search, so why don’t you dummy? Great way of building rapport with potential customers! Unsurprisingly we won’t be giving this company a call.
Well everyone has to market their business, so how can SEO companies go about it properly? We have a few ideas:
1) Have a well optimised website which ranks well for SEO related search terms, and probably includes geographic optimisation if you are targeting a specific geographic area. An SEO website which doesn’t contain very good SEO, would be a bit like a translation agency having a website without any translation, very strange, and not very convincing.
2) Show yourself as a quality provider by having good site content and setting out your credentials.
3) If you must cold call companies then do some research first and show that you know what you are talking about.
4) Don’t talk down to potential clients….. Is this one really that difficult? Over the years we’ve had phone calls bordering on the abusive from people marketing SEO companies. They may not be paying much for the service whether this is provided by employees or sub-contracted, but this kind of marketing destroys all credibility.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:11 pm
What a disspiriting tale but, sadly, it’s not uncommon. I wonder if it’s down to people being so keen to take a “creative” approach to marketing in an understandable desire to stand out from the crowd (as they say) which ends up with them being “creative” for “creative”’s sake. Some wacky stunt can easily undermine a business’ credibility and this is a particulr danger in the business-to-business arena where humour can be useful but needs to be handled with care. It’s no wonder you felt insulted by this prank.
Not so long ago I received a similarly “creative” piece of direct mail – a fake newspaper cutting extolling the virtues of a business advice provider. The envelope was postmarked from the West Midlands and the cutting had a hand-written post-it note attached recommending the provider and signed by “J”. Worth a try, I guess, but given that I don’t know anyone who would sign themselves “J” let alone someone in the West Midlands who would do that, this was quickly rumbled as being downright deceitful and an insult to my intelligence.
I’d add to your tips: think about the knock-on effects to your reputation BEFORE to get enthralled by the idea of a crazy creative promotional trick – is it really worth coming across as patronising, manipulative or even worse?
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Hi Francine
Your experience sounds even worse than mine. In general I don’t like direct mail at the best of times. Not sure what the success rate is, but I seem to remember that it has one of the worst marketing hit rates. Received another annoying one today. A brochure from an estate agent marketing space in an award winning low carbon building I attended a meeting in recently. What was annoying was that they’ve worsened the carbon footprint by direct mailing companies about an eco-friendly building! A more creative and environmentally friendly approach would have been much more appropriate.
Regards
Mike
September 6th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Buy:Zithromax.Soma.Cialis.Cialis Professional.Tramadol.Propecia.Super Active ED Pack.Maxaman.Viagra Super Force.VPXL.Viagra Super Active+.Cialis Soft Tabs.Levitra.Viagra Professional.Cialis Super Active+.Viagra.Viagra Soft Tabs….