As all my clients know, one of the services we provide as part of our Footprint Bundle is a dedicated Media Consultant. What this means is that you basically have an employee at your disposal to handle any Internet Marketing or Advertising issues. If a company is trying to sell you SEO or PPC Internet Marketing, we’ll sit in on that meeting (or even take the meeting for you) and give you our feedback as to whether it makes sense for your business in our opinion. We’re fair about it too. We often recommend other services. Our only goal with this process is to make sure that our business partners are informed when they make an advertising or marketing decision.

So last week one of my clients calls me up and tells me about an internet marketing company that called him. He received a call from a lady with Net Biz claiming that for $300 a month he would be on the first page of Google 24/7 in the sponsored links for an ultra competitive keyword phrase. He asked me to call her and get more details before he signed up. Perfect scenario for me. This is another reason why I love what I do. I’m about to learn something. I’m going to learn 1 of 2 things; either I’m going to call this company and they are offering a great service that no one knows about (which I can now recommend to other clients of mine who are not competitors with this client) or this is a service that is not what it seems and I’ll strongly recommend that my client not do business with these guys. My guess is the latter but hey, you never know so I always keep an open mind.

So I call Lori from Net Biz (http://www.netbiz.com) and inform her that I’m business partners with the individual that she spoke to earlier and I need to understand what this service is so we can make an informed decision. She tells me that for $300 a month she’ll give me 1st page placement for the keyword ‘Pest Control’ in the Austin market 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire month.

Now, I come from a company that managed millions of dollars in Google Adwords campaigns on a monthly basis and I saw customers spending upwards of $5000 monthly in this same category and they were not showing up “24/7″ so I know something is very fishy here. I ask her how is this possible considering bidding for this exact key word phrase often reaches $9 per click on the high? Lori hates this question (there’s a good chance she hates me too). She’s irritated that I’m asking questions and quickly calls her manager over to get on the phone. The manager proceeds to tell me that NetBiz has an exclusive deal with Google that allows them to essentially sell one fixed sponsored links listing per key word phrase, per market, that will show up 24/7 for the entire month. Hrrmm….is that even possible? For a second, I’m wondering if this little company in Portland, OR has found (or negotiated) the holy grail in PPC advertising with Google. That self doubt lasted about .8 seconds until the manager proceeded to use fear tactics to close me. He said:

‘Well sir, I don’t have any more time to answer these questions you have. You see, in our exclusive deal with Google, we can only list one company per key word phrase and we’ve got to find someone today. I don’t care whether you do it or not but I’ll promise you one thing, somebody will buy this by the end of the day. It’s either going to be you or your competitor. So is this something you can commit to today?

Well now there’s zero doubt in my head that this whole thing was a scam. The best analogy I can give you is that if I somehow found a way to sell you an iPhone that you could use on any provider’s network, for $25, that would be the easiest sale ever right? If I had a limited supply the first thing I would do is call the people closest to me and offer them that deal, then I’d open it up to my extended network, then the public. One thing is for sure, I would be sold out…and quickly at that. I definitely wouldn’t have to sell this to strangers and use scare tactics like; ‘well sir, I only have 15 iPhones left and I really don’t care who buys them but I know I won’t have them by tomorrow’. No way. If I had a deal that sweet, you’d have to know me or have done business with me before for me to hook you up. The general public wouldn’t ever even get a chance to tell me no. Because $25 for an iPhone that works on any network is exactly that; a hookup. Just like paying a flat fee to be listed 24/7 in an industry where other companies are paying thousands of dollars a month and not getting that exposure, is a hookup.

So now I know that this isn’t legit but I still want something more concrete to take back to my client. I tell the manager (I believe is name was Damon) thanks for answering my questions and ask to be transferred back to Lori. I tell Lori that I’m ready to sign up today but that I need to see everything we just talked about in writing. She again, is irritated and summons her manager but this time she is talking to him with me in ear shot. After sharing my request with her manager, she tells me that the contract is ‘Locked” and doesn’t get “Released” until I pay for the service. I respectfully tell her that without any expectations in writing, there is no way we can do business. She again summons Damon over and after some back and forth, he agrees to “Unlock” the Terms and Conditions. She quickly emails me a copy. I’m paraphrasing (If you’d like to read the T’s & C”s yourself here it is) but the document essentially says that they will guarantee you 1st page results. The document does not say which key words you’re getting and it says that if it ever gets too expensive, they have the right of taking you down and/or offering you the right to stay up at a higher price. In other words, they could put me on the first page results for any low volume keyword phrase and as long as I showed up on the 1st page, they would technically be honoring the contract. I even researched this a little further and found a few horror stories claiming this exactly (If you’d like these examples email me and I’ll them to you ). So as you can imagine, I called my client up and told him my recommendation is to not do business with this company and I explained why.

I’m sharing this story for two reasons; 1) I’m proud of the service we offer and the fact that we save our clients time and money and 2) The best way to start any business relationship is with proper expectations. If someone is selling you ‘pie in the sky’ or something that sounds too good to be true. It almost always is. I would love to buy an iPhone for my mom (who’s a Verizon customer) for $25 but there’s not too many of those flying around (at least not yet).

Epic Media’s Internet Marketing solutions are custom tailored to your business.  Our Footprint Bundle is an ROI driven service to effectively market your business and help you dominate your vertical locally. This service includes Directory Marketing, Maps Optimization, Web Analytics and  Call Tracking to ensure you’re getting results and that our efforts are impacting your bottom line. The best part of of this service is that we guarantee it’s effectiveness – or you don’t pay your next months bill.

One of (if not the) most important parts of a successful online strategy for a small business is an effective web site that speaks to your target audience. Be it a simple web presence or a complex technical site, Epic Media provides web sites for small businesses at a great value. Each of our sites is SEO optimized for your targeted keywords to make sure your customers can find you locally.

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Our SEO Services will work with you and determine the proper keywords for your site and help develop and implement an SEO strategy to increase the level of organic traffic being driven to your web site. We’ve been very successful in the past in helping our clients get to the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing and can do the same for your business. As with our Footprint Bundle, our SEO services come with a performance guarantee. You will only pay for our SEO services once the desired results are delivered.

Social Media is big business. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and all the other usual suspects are here to stay. Yet with all these free tools and millions of users how does any of it make sense for your business? Our media consultants here at Epic Media are experts in helping to see which of the Social Networks are relevant for your business and then establishing a strategy with clear cut milestones and goals so that your business is well positioned to benefit from social media.