Years ago, my boss and I were having a conversation about his previous webmaster/marketer. I was trying to probe for some details about what happened prior to my being hired. My boss founded a media mentoring company to help people learn how to become film editors, cinematographers, radio broadcasters and audio recording engineers. It did well for him and he had been in business for about 20 years.
By the time the Internet came around he knew he needed websites, but he didn’t know anything about SEO or online marketing. This lack of knowledge put him in a vulnerable position. Worse, he didn’t seem to be interested in online marketing particularly, and appeared to prefer to hire someone to do it.
His view was not unreasonable or illogical because he was busy running the company, having meetings and enjoying the life he had created for himself. He also had a child to take care of and was a single parent with an ex-partner who had a major health issue.
When I asked him about his previous webmaster, he told me that the online marketing was set up so that even though the company owner had four of his own domains and websites he had to pay for each lead from his own sites! So the webmaster somehow was able to charge a monthly fee for the website updates, maintenance, a little Web development and a fee for every lead that was generated by the sites.
Why my boss accepted these terms still baffles me today and I didn’t want to press him further on the issue. However, he did reveal that the webmaster probably ripped him off for about $100,000 by charging him lead fees.
Personally, I have never heard of such a parasitic arrangement. My guess is that my boss (then) simply didn’t know enough at the time to be able to push back and negotiate, so he let himself sort of fall into the very unfavorable deal.
Running a successful business requires a lot of attention, time and energy so my boss may have already been fully occupied. At the same time, he didn’t ask questions and dig into details about the SEO, content development, content strategy, keyword research and online ad campaigns. Writing that might sound overly critical but there aren’t any names mentioned here.
The point is that someone reading this article might not understand learning about some ‘techie’ subjects that influence her or his business can create a situation an unscrupulous online marketer might exploit.
So, if you are a decision-maker in your organization, how do you avoid getting ripped off?
You will need to at least read a little consistently about aspects of online marketing so you can have meaningful conversations with potential marketing companies or individual candidates you interview to hire.
If you don’t like reading, you might listen to some online marketing podcasts or watch some YouTube explainer videos. Consuming audio and video might be more relaxing than reading as well. Even though it seems kind of nerdy you might watch a few Youtube videos made by online marketers during dinner or lunch.
Of course, you could also reach out to friends or your business networks to talk with them about what you need to know, and to ask for referrals to online marketers who are trustworthy.
Many of them may be operating with ethical standards, but it only takes working with the wrong one to lose a major chunk of change, as they say.
It might be hard for us to acknowledge when we don’t know something, but it’s much better to accept it and then put in the effort to fill in the gaps, than to get ripped off by someone who misrepresents themselves or gets you to accept very unfair terms.