While my staging business is a fairly new endeavor officially, online marketing is a not new to me. With over twelve years of online marketing successes, and failures through trial and error, I've learned a lot. Throughout the last twelve years, I've "met" a lot of business owners who seem to fall into two completely different categories. Those who see the value in developing relationships with related service or product providers, and those who don't feel they need to. While I'm confident that there are a small few businesses out there that may not benefit from networking, I'm hard pressed to understand how many more do not realize how beneficial it truly is to reach out to other business owners.
Earlier this year, I invested some well earned cash in an online course that appeared to be incredibly interesting to me. This course was very well marketed, very well presented, and did indeed have some valuable information. I was enthused! Not only did I learn some very useful tips and tricks, but I also took note of the marketing strategies employed by the company offering the course. I will be honest, I was impressed.
After almost two thousand dollars and several weeks of study, I finished the course. YEAH! I was psyched and raring to go. The course succeeded in motivating me and assisting me in getting my ducks in a row. Well done. I eagerly followed the advice given and began to market my own brand. After a few weeks of diligently putting my time in marketing, building, primping my online presence, I received an email from the company that offered the course promoting a directory listing that could benefit my search engine ranking, and ultimately my wallet. I skimmed the email, admiring the great writing, and the well laid out promotional material. "Great" I thought, until I got to the paragraph telling me what a fantastic deal that my hard earned three hundred dollars + would buy in "hosting" costs. I stopped right there. "Hosting?" I thought? Three hundred + dollars for a couple of months of hosting to advertise on a directory? EH? I have a hosting account of my own with several domains and sites to go with them with fantastic traffic and it costs me a whopping ten dollars each month. I knew better.
I knew that several hundred dollars for "hosting" my text based, plus two graphics was not costing anyone even a fraction-worth-mentioning of three hundred dollars. I've managed and developed several online community and content based web sites over the years and many of them had Google page ranks of 4+. None of them ever commanded a hosting expense of any more than $45 in hosting alone on a dedicated server per month! That little "rip off" alarm went off in my head. I was so disappointed in this company. I thought about all of the other smaller businesses like mine who believed that "hosting" costs for a directory listing which had an already separate cost just for posting the listing, was reasonable. GAH! All of the positive associations I had with this company were quickly suppressed as disappointment became the primary feeling.
As I read on, a second offer was presented with a less expensive "option" of purchasing a "mini-listing" within the same directory. This "mini-listing" would reside with other business owners offering the same service, but more likely not in the same geographical areas. That offer was a little more palatable and even though the first offer aggravated the daylights out of me, I purchased the mini-listing in hopes that the hype would in turn prove true and that the traffic would pour in.
About a week later, I received an email from this company critiquing my web site. I had no idea that a site review was included in the marketing package, it wasn't mentioned within the marketing material. Needless to say, the "review" had a few valuable points to note, but the delivery was not encouraging and came across as somewhat condescending. Within that review, I was told that because I did not employ all of their marketing principles, that my mini-listing would be useless and that perhaps a "profile listing" (the above mentioned several hundred dollar package) would be more beneficial.
After I read that email, I was simply astounded that such a well marketed company, with so much valuable information, such seemingly great business sense, would ever send one of their clients such correspondence. On top of that, I was told that a link back to their web site was mandatory.
I don't believe in strong arming clients into endorsements. I don't believe in providing clients with negative feedback in order to up-sell. I don't believe in overcharging clients in hopes they don't know any better about a product. I realized this was a company I really did not want to be associated with. I was disappointed. very disappointed. I checked my Google Analytics account one last time to see if the click-through-rate had improved, and with only forty+ clicks from this listing in over a month, it did not warrant the expense. Not even close. I canceled the listing via email. I received a reply the next day telling me that according to Google, that my ranking for the directory listing already came up at number x, y and z out of 8,000 results for my name and key words "home staging", while my own site didn't come up at all on the first page. What I saw when I entered the same key words was that I came up with a rank of #1 linked back to me free Active Rain profile!
Do you think that email changed my mind about canceling the directory listing?
Spread your marketing efforts over as many different online locations that you possibly can. Contact me about how we can network.
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