Today’s blog post is a bit of rant to be honest about a “Small Business Marketing Specialist” that I have met a few times on the business networking circuit who claims to be an “expert” at Internet marketing strategies for the small business owner.
It’s not in my nature to name and shame people so I’m keeping his identity close to my chest to avoid embarrassment (not to mention a potential smack in the mouth for me), however I’ve chosen to rant on about this guy as I feel he’s a good example of the many so called “experts” out there who claim to be “specialists” but in reality are either just resellers of ropey MLM schemes or have bought into a franchise which gives them little or no training.
The end result in each case, is that the client generally doesn’t get what they expect for their money!
Such people do nothing but confuse potential clients with their weak and ill informed strategies and claims of success. Similarly I find that they dilute the value and expertise of the genuine Internet marketer who does know their stuff and who can add value to their clients.
Calm down! Calm down!
Makes my blood boil!
So here goes…let’s call him “Mr Internet” for the sake of reference.
Where to Begin?
I don’t know about you, but if I was looking for an Internet marketer I would at least expect them to have a half decent website themselves that was relatively well ranked in the search engines. Wouldn’t you?
Mr. Internet’s site is open on the screen in front of me now and quite frankly where do I start? A bulleted list is a good method I think:
- First of all I had to close down my default Firefox browser and view the site in Internet Explorer as it didn’t display correctly. Oh dear!
- Some Links don’t work. Grrr!.
- Page copy has spelling mistakes with some phrases underlined for emphasis but this makes me think they are links; which they’re not. Frustrating!
- A template design that is straight out of the early 1990’s in terms of style and features poorly written copy (boring to be honest) and ropey text layout.
- A top level menu item labeled “Test Page” which leads to a blank page containing the phrase “text1”. Huh, what’s that all about?
- Clicking through to the site’s “Services” section — I was presented with “Coming Soon” text. Sob! I’m starting to get depressed now!
- The feedback form threw up an error when submitted, so whether my email was sent or not; I haven’t a clue!
- Very little search engine optimisation work had being done on the site’s pages. Meta Title tags were often duplicated across pages with keyword stuffing in the Meta-Description tab. No wonder this site was nowhere to be seen in Google.
The list goes on and on, particularly when I asked one of my designers to offer his opinion. And as for the standard of the code! Well. let’s say as far as ‘tables’ are concerned, my dining room one is better constructed.
And this guy calls himself a professional.
And I’m Ranting Why?
So what has this rant got to do with you, my blog readers?
Well I suppose it’s a warning really, not to take someone at face-value before you sign on the dotted line. Mr. Internet bills his time out at £400 per day according to his website, fine if he knows his stuff; but to be honest I’d love to speak to some of his clients to see what value for money they think he’s delivered for them? I suspect it isn’t much.
Ultimately I suppose I’m getting on my high horse about this bloke because £400 a day is a lot of cash for a small business and I just have this feeling that this guy is peddling his wares and then leaving his clients penniless and disappointed with the results. Then it becomes a case of once bitten, twice shy when a ‘proper’ internet marketer is employed to do the job and there’s no budget left.
Rant over!
I feel a lot better now.
Thanks for listening.
What Everybody Should Know About Dodgy Internet Experts http://ff.im/-49czD
This happens all the time, which is why it is so important that if you claim to be an internet marketer, SEO, or new media guru that you actually know what you’re doing! At the company I work for we are very proud of the fact that we come up(in a .co.uk search) on page 1 for “web design” and for “search engine optimisation” — we do it for ourselves on such competitive phrases, so of course our customers are doing well.
I like the rant.
It’s just such a murky area, particularly when you get into areas like marketing, SEO, etc — which ultimately are results based.
We view a lot of things this way — our focus is to achieve a good ROI for our clients — but often they simply don’t believe us because they’re been “had” in the past!
To us it’s logical — if they win, we win by proxy — ripping them off achieves nothing for us in the long term. Oh well. I’m not about to stop trying — but it’s damn frustrating!