I have been thinking about this topic for a long time. I tried to keep my inner voice to myself, but if you have read my blog before, you surely noticed that my inner voice has a bullhorn. I say what I think. I have said it before that “I do not try to please everybody, and that pleases some people very much.”
Call me a crusty old bastard if you like. Worse things have been said before, and you will not hurt my feelings. I only get my feelings hurt by people who care enough to create a meaningful dialog with me, and make a relationship. I welcome them to my table, and I will share my blog feast with them any day.
Conversely, trolls can have the corn preserved on the other side of my digestive system. Regarding lurkers, I kind of think of them like zombies. I am not sure if they have thoughts and feelings of their own, because they refuse to reveal them.
So what about the blog trolls and lurkers? I could take this examination to all new heights, because I know trolls, and I have enough lurkers to fill the Mariana Trench! Rather than drawing this out with a lengthy psychological analysis, I will just heave a heavy-handed slap in their direction and let you rip them a new one with your comments if you feel up to it.
Blog Trolls: Read the Sign!
Blog Trolls Read the SignTrolls suck! I have read multiple new blog articles that touched on the topic only yesterday*. Blog trolls are the bane of a blogger’s existence, and they insult our hard work.
Trolls leave pithy comments on blogs, and drop their website links in attempts to boost their ranking in search engines at the expense of hard working bloggers. Some trolls are out to cause an argument or to harass writers for missing a comma or spelling somtheing inkerektly.
Blog trolls don’t have any meaningful input, and they are just out for themselves. Some companies use blog trolling as their core online marketing strategy. If you want to see how “brilliant” that plan is, read about Ray Skillman.
When a blogger sits down to write about something, they are trying to communicate with you. They usually want to open a conversation with you, and they value your input as much as their own. It is how we learn together and often build meaningful relationships.
Two way communication is a basic concept of blogging. Collaboration is not something the doctor does when he lifts your gown and tells you to relax. It is a way for a community to enjoy the benefits of more than one mind.
Blog Lurker Bank and TrustBloggers often work very hard to research and produce something that is useful or interesting to you. Yes, you, and not the person standing over your shoulder reading your screen.
People often treat elections this way, too. They just assume that “the other people” will vote. In case you have not noticed the state of politics in this world, that is not productive thinking. It is not productive in politics, and it is not productive in blogs.
If you just suck up a blogger’s knowledge like free grape soda, without so much as nod of approval, or giving something back, don’t you feel just a tiny bit ashamed? Are you the kind who will walk up to the cash register at a convenience store and grab every coin in the “Take a Penny, Leave a Penny” tray?
Didn’t your parents ever tell you that it is nice to share, and that keeping everything to yourself is not polite? Oh, and seriously, do you really not think we bloggers see the 18 minutes you spent reading three articles, and then come back two days later to suck up another 43 minutes of our hard work? Yeah, we see that, and we know you are there.
We appreciate that you appreciate us, but why don’t you at least say “hello” and introduce yourself? I mean, we are your free labor, often doing the research that saves you countless hours of frustration. You could at least throw us your two cents between our long working shifts.
Trolls and Lurkers Say “Who Me?”
If you think this is directed to you, you are right. I am writing directly to you, whether you are a blogger, a blog troll, or a lurker. Until you take the initiative to introduce yourself to the other readers of any blog, you are missing the best value of blogs.
Sure, you can sneer at me and think I am an ass for saying what millions of other bloggers feel. I cannot speak for all bloggers, but this will cover a majority. We are working hard for your benefit, and what you failed to notice is that the greatest value comes to those who participate.
Maybe you think we get paid for this. Some bloggers do, but most are doing this to share good information above all. Some have advertisements to help cover their cost, and some blogs are there to promote a brand. There are many good reasons to blog, but most blogs are produced to be helpful and thought provoking, regardless of any other motivation.
For example: If you think that I write about SEO and social media marketing just to sell you something, consider this: If I sold my services to any more than one in 50,000 readers, my services would suffer, and I would be too busy to write this blog. I am not here to fool you, but rather to help you. If I get the benefit of a new client, or a little respect for knowing my job well, that seems pretty fair for both of us.
Don’t ask me for pandering, undue compliments, or to fluff your Teddy bear and pat you on the bum. Heck, just search Google for how to polarize an audience, and there I am … in your face! If you want somebody to tell you how it isn’t, go somewhere else. I will tell you how it is … according to Murnahan, of course.
People ask me all the time, for ideas about how they can make their business better, stronger, and more profitable. They want to know what will convince more people to spend hard-earned money with their company.
I usually have some useful tips for them. I love to help, and I enjoy the look on their faces when they say “Why didn’t we ever think of that?” It is even more adorable when they call me to tell me that they implemented the tip and it is working for them.
It feels great to be helpful, and it keeps me sharp with new ideas. It is also why I write this blog, and why you see my direct phone line at the top of every blog post with the statement “I am always ready for a brainstorm. Call me at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*.”
One of my best tips, in a single word, is “Awesomeness”. I will explain this, and how you can create greater awesomeness for your customers.
Being Helpful Grows Awesomeness!
I want to explain a principle that may seem scary to some people, but it is one which has served me very well in life, and in business. It requires patience and practice, but it has never failed me in the long-term. In order to explain it best, I will use my own experience. I could explain it in some fancy theoretical terms, but this comes from real life … my real everyday work.
It is my job to provide answers for improving companies and making them more marketable. I do a lot of my work free of charge. Well, at least I try very hard to blog about it in ways that people can use it. I’d call that work, so yes, I do a lot of my work for free.
Since I only work with a very small number of clients, and because a company has to be pretty serious about their marketing to hire my services, I make many efforts to help others without digging into their pockets. Don’t worry, it is not some kind of Jedi mind trick (video reference), and I am not selling something here. Being helpful gives me good karma, mojo, luck, or whatever you want to call it.
Being helpful is a principle that is used in abundance by successful companies, and successful people. You really don’t have to look around very hard to see this in action. It is a principle that is even more important when applied to the Internet, and I’ll tell you why. When it comes to Internet dealings, people have a very strong filter for noise. I wrote about this a while back, in an article titled “Will Your Social Media Noise Withstand 2011 Filtering?” They are also commonly very skeptical. There is a lot of “crap” on the Internet to overcome, as a consumer.
Many companies use blogs and other social media tools to be more helpful and interesting to their potential market. When they provide useful information, it brings attention to their brand. It is a means to express a company’s awesomeness and to put their helpfulness to work, and their company culture on the front line. There are many good reasons for companies to have a blog, in fact, I can offer you 10 really good reasons to blog.
I could stop right here, but I just told you this as a preface for the real point of this article. You can stop here, add your comments, tweet it, Facebook it, blog about it, and etcetera, but there is more! Yes, it is lengthy, but that is why there is a play button on my blog (at the top). If you don’t have time to read it, at least care enough about your business to push play and listen.
What Do They Pay For? That’s Right … Awesomeness!
The principle of being helpful is only one piece of success, but a huge piece that a lot of companies totally neglect. Somebody has to pay for all of that helpfulness, or the company would go broke. So, a lot of companies are left with a question of who will pay for that? Can you believe it? Companies actually treat it as a “dilemma” of whether it is a good idea for them to be helpful. This is why I find that even when they are helpful, they seldom make it to “awesome” status.
Awesomeness Creates More Business
The reason I mentioned this principle of being helpful is because I want you to pay attention without thinking I am here to sell you something. Call it a bonus, and whatever you do, please try to implement that tip. Be helpful … It is for your own benefit!
Now I am going to tell you what people actually pay me for, and explain ways you can benefit from it without having to pay me. Come to think of it, this may not go just right, but I am pretty sure I am not obsolete quite yet. In any case, I want you to use this for your own gain.
This May Not Be Awesome, But it is Helpful!
As a marketing guy, a huge amount of my work is not focused on helping companies with the obvious marketing task of getting their name in front of more people. Does that sound strange? It probably sounds totally crazy to a lot of people. In fact, you may be wondering, “Where in the heck do you find these idiots who pay you, Murnahan?” Yes, I am paid by aliens from another planet … but they are very successful Zarkmobians from Planet Narburloid.
It is true, though, because a significant amount of my work involves making them more marketable. That means digging into who they are, as a company. They pay me to develop a strong understanding of who they are, and to uncover what makes them more like sex, bacon, and other things people love. My job is to get a solid grasp on their “awesomeness” by viewing the culture of the company from a unique perspective. With this, it is my responsibility to create their best marketing strategy.
You can get a better picture of your awesomeness by talking to people. Ask people you respect. Ask people you don’t respect. Ask people who buy from you. Ask people who don’t buy from you. Ask without a word, by researching your market, and uncovering the real forces that drive your market. Ask a lot of questions, and pay careful attention to the answers. This will help you to discover your best customers!
Discovering the Model Customer
Once I know a company’s best assets (their awesomeness), I can begin the research to build a perfect model of their customers. Knowing the right audience is extremely important, especially if you want a return on your marketing investment. I wrote about this a couple times recently, and I hope you read those articles. I will add some links below, but if you are not a subscriber, do it now … it is free. I will say it again, though … ask a lot of questions, and pay attention to the answers. Below are some links to help you with your customer modeling, but note that they will only help you if you use them!
After the ideal customer models are in place, I can accurately direct my clients as to how they fit into their marketplace. Then, I can also provide steps to better adapt to their market. This is when the real awesomeness is unleashed. It is completely different for every company, in every industry.
If you do not know your competition, you probably don’t know your market very well. You need to know your market before you can even begin to get ahead. If you learn the forces working against you, it will be a whole lot easier to overcome them.
Spend some time knowing your market, including your competition. Most companies do a terrible job of this, so it is like low hanging fruit for you. Pick it!
Producing Awesome is Not Easy!
Most companies simply cannot see their business clearly from a marketability standpoint, and it becomes their Achilles heel. This destroys many companies.
Achilles Marketing Heel
Even when they think they have a good grasp on their “awesomeness”, most companies do not express it very well. I have said a lot about good reasons to blog, and good uses for social media. None of it centers on the use of destructive interruption marketing.
The challenge here is to present your company in a way that it is appealing to the customer, based on what they want, instead of just what the company wants.
I return to the principle of being useful. Most companies, including your competitors, will not have the required patience to be useful and give their customers a reason to buy from them. Many will just hope to flash a sale price and scream their selling message, but only a relatively few will put aside the selling enough to understand what will inspire buying.
Most companies (yes, most) will choose to skip the important research. It is not easy work, and it bores a lot of people to tears. It becomes too much hassle to actually build their understanding of the customer. For a lot of people, it would be cruel and unusual punishment just to finish reading this article, not to mention actually implementing the suggestions.
Here is where the punishment really pays off: If you understand your customers’ motivations to buy, and address it properly, they will tell each other. Your job becomes a lot easier.
Delivering Awesomeness to The People
Once the marketability factors are perfectly in place, it is a whole lot easier to deliver it to the people. Delivering something marketable to the people is simple! Have you seen how many amazing tools there are for delivering a good message to people? Just think of the first ones that come to mind. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, blogs … and the list goes on.
You want some awesome? Check this out! Here is some unsuspecting awesomeness for you. They didn’t seem all that amazing to me at first, but you would probably never believe me if I told you how many times these made my phone ring. These are just a couple of many examples, but the articles below make a good point.
So you must be asking, “How did these make the phone ring?” It was because those little pieces of awesomeness made people think. They made people laugh. They compelled people to share them with others, and they created a squillion new links to my blog. Bonus Points: They were also extremely relevant to my industry.
Those links enhance my SEO (search engine optimization), and reflect credibility to search engines by showing popularity. That credibility helps everything else I write about to rank higher in search engines. That is how SEO works! This matters far more than the mechanical approach to SEO. The trick is to be awesome as often as possible, or at least as a high percentage of your efforts.
Are you getting it yet? A little bit of awesome carries a long way. I don’t make “awesome” happen every time, and you will not either. I know when it is needed, how to do it, and why it matters. That comes with practice, so start practicing!
How much more can I say? I gave you a lot of good links within this article, and I did not include a single one to waste your time. I just gave you tools to learn and implement excellent marketing. I hope I have encouraged you to take the same approach of researching your market and to provide value to your potential customers.
I suggest that you give in order to receive. As an example that I mean what I say, I am giving $5,000 just to receive an introduction to somebody interested in paying for my services. That pretty well covers the “awesome” and the “helpful” in my book.
Of course, companies pay me for a lot more than what I included here. If you have the time to exercise your patience, and put some practice to use, you will find a whole lot more free assistance in my blog archive. I do it to be useful, and that works for me. I believe it will work for you as well.
I will allow you this moment to practice being helpful and awesome. This is your chance to add your helpful comment, and share how you apply these principles, or how you feel you could do better. If you want to get outrageously helpful, give this a tweet, a Facebook like, a stumble, a digg, or whatever it is that you do to share helpful things with others.
Do you sell something that has a potential market of “everyone”? Maybe you sell widgets, doodads, or gadgets that everybody in their right mind should own. If you treat your marketing that way, you are probably pretty frustrated.
I learned this the hard way, many years ago, by thinking that “everybody” was my target market. I remember when I sought out my market with thoughts like “Who wouldn’t buy my stuff? They must be crazy if they don’t buy!” Then I parked my bicycle and quit my paper route.
I learned what it meant to target my marketing. I stopped wasting time and money trying to reach everybody with a good reason to buy my stuff. The result was that I sold a lot more stuff.
When I stopped viewing everybody as a potential customer, I also stopped seeing them all as the “deadbeats” who wore me down and just wouldn’t buy. I started loving them more each day, and it turned out that my business grew massively.
Carefully conceived targeted marketing is a huge factor of success in a business. I don’t just mean targeting your market for every customer who will buy, either. I mean targeting your market for the customers you want, and who will help your business to grow.
I want to help you to avoid this common oversight, because it is in the top five most costly business errors. It runs close behind killing a hooker (and getting caught), or naming your child Bernie Madoff.
If you try to market something by believing your ideal target market is “everybody”, it is like hunting elephants in a termite mound. You will find a lot of termites there, but very few elephants. Many people only believe this after a “less-than-ideal” profit and loss statement proves it to them.
Marketing to Morons, Idiots, and Fools
Sure, I still think that most people are just totally insane if they don’t write me a check, give me their credit card, or provide me the passwords to their massive offshore bank account. They should at least send me a box of cigars and a bottle of Bourbon to butter me up. I mean, after all, I know it is mathematically factual that I sell something which returns more money than its cost. What kind of moron can’t see that?
Let me tell you something you you probably already know. There are a whole bunch of crazy, “idiots, morons, and fools” out there who will not buy what you sell. Even if you are selling the cure for cancer, free money, or a magical 24 hour orgasm, it will not sell itself. It will also not sell to “everybody”. Marketing to “everybody” as a prospective buyer would not even be a wise marketing approach if Coca Cola, McDonald’s, and Microsoft merged.
When you consider it closely, maybe they are not all such idiots, morons and fools. Instead, maybe it is your lack of targeted marketing, using data-driven customer modeling and calculated market segmentation.
Targeted marketing is exactly why I don’t write this blog for idiots, morons, and fools. I write it for people like you, who will appreciate good marketing ideas, pass them along to others, and add to the conversation with your comments. Actually, I don’t rely on the blog comments so much, because my target audience is pretty shy, but they do share a lot.
Target Market Segmentation Challenge
My challenge to you is to take the time and effort to segment your market more carefully. Start thinking in terms of demographics, psychographics, geographics, and who your best customers really are. What spins their fan, and what can you do to make your brand more like sex, bacon, and other things they love? Where will you reach them, and what will inspire them? Use what you know, expand what you know, and get creative with your marketing.
Targeted marketing seems very foreign to many people, but the good news is that this includes your competition. Just like everybody is not a customer, everybody is not a marketing genius either. Understanding a market requires marketing talent, which comes with practice, accurate data, and the right set of marketing tools. Unless you are willing to hire a professional, you will need to practice, and practice a lot.
I think of it like a trip to the gun range. Sure, I like to bring a lot of ammunition, but it is even more important to use the right gun, and learn how to aim it well. A sniper rifle is best, but many people fear that level of commitment to their marketing. So it is best to at least learn how to aim what you have. A Lot of Ammunition is Good, But Sharper Aim is Better!
Practice Targeting Your Market
Maybe you believed that optimizing your marketing reach would be easy in the beginning, but you surely know better by now. Look at your market penetration and consider these questions:
Are getting all you can (or at least all you want)?
Are you getting huge buyout offers?
Are you expanding your company at astonishing rates that would make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg blush?
If your answers are “no”, then you need more practice to hone your skills. It will not kill you, and in the off chance it does, it was nice knowing you. If you are not afraid of dying, keep reading for thoughtful encouragement.
Practice your creative thinking. Practice your analytical thinking. Figure out who wants what you have, and what they will respond to favorably. Don’t try to reach them all. I know that it is hard to overlook all of those potential customers, but you will reach a whole lot more of them if your marketing is targeted appropriately.
If growing your business really matters to you, be ready to lose some sleep for it. Perfect customer modeling takes a lot of marketing talent and creativity. These are things you can improve, with enough effort.
Back to the gun analogy: You can make a lot of noise and scatter a lot of lead with a 12 gauge shotgun. It is particularly good for scaring your customers away, but not very good for hitting them in the heart, where you want your brand to penetrate. When you hit your market in the heart, you will find a lot more love flowing in both directions.
Shotgun Marketing Scares More Birds Away
If you don’t have the time or skill to become a true marksman, it is best to either rework your schedule to develop your abilities, or find a good hired gun.
I will part with some articles related to targeted marketing. There are more in my blog archive, and more yet to come. Check them out and subscribe for more bits of marketing brain food coming soon.
Bloomingdale's Douchebag Award
I have a question for Bloomingdale’s, and then I will move on with the story. Here is my question: “Dear Bloomingdale’s: Did you bump your collective head?”
Bloomingdale’s department store sent me a cease and desist notice for mentioning them, along with a link to their website. Strangely, I find that other companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Pepsi, and other brands don’t seem to mind positive mention from the public. No, instead, they seem to like all of those mentions of their brand name along with links to their websites. It is what makes them more popular, and it is good for SEO. That means search engine optimization, Bloomingdale’s.
Do you ever come across a company that makes you absolutely convinced that somebody “upstairs” in the corporation took one too many drunken stage dives? I do, and I got that feeling today when I sorted through an email spam folder. I discovered threatening letters from Bloomingdale’s department store claiming they plan to sue me if I do not remove their name from one of my websites.
So, what in the name of all things rational is fleeting through the legal minds at Bloomingdale’s? Are they trying to squash all mentions of their brand name on the Internet, or did they just pick on my 2002 relic that listed their website in a shopping directory?
Aside from the fact that they emailed me a spam-ish form letter, it kind of made me wonder if they just don’t receive the Internet over in their part of the world. Oh yes, Bloomingdale’s is based in New York, NY, and I know they must have access to mostly the same Internet as the rest of us. It seems odd that they didn’t figure out those links are good for them.
Maybe they are just too damn tired of being in business and want to call it quits. Maybe they have enough business, and just thumb their nose at all of the rif-raf out here on the silly and icky Internet. It beats me, but there is definitely something resembling last year’s tuna salad. It doesn’t smell healthy to me.
It made me wonder just what asinine sort of “unbranding” they are seeking by picking on me. Bloomingdale’s actually wants to erase a positive mention and a website link to their company, and they threatened a lawsuit to make it happen. Who is running the Bloomingdale’s Internet campaigns? Is it the “stars” from Jersey Shore?
To me, it seems they are having one of those moments that you or I may call a “shit the bed” encounter. You know, one of those times when you wake up ready for a challenge and say “Damn, I am feeling way too smart, and it has been a while since I topped my all time stupidest moment.”
Before I go too far, let me just say this: If you should choose to link to my website as a good resource for the SEO and social media marketing services I offer, it is pretty unlikely that I will send you nasty email messages filled with idiotic idle threats about suing you. I don’t sue for Twitter retweets, Digg votes, or Facebook likes, either. No, instead, I will more likely send you a pair of lips to virtually kiss you square on the mouth. In any case, I will not treat you the way Bloomingdale’s Department Store treated me!
Bloomingdale’s Threatens to Sue for Promoting Them
I have included letters that I received describing Bloomingdale’s threats to sue for using their name in a shopping directory (see below). I omitted the URL where the alleged offense occurred, but not because there was any violation. I simply do not intend to give the Bloomingdale’s website link on that page any further relevance by mentioning it here.
The website in question was from a retail example website for my wholesale Internet access company. It was created as a working demo for wholesale ISP (Internet service provider) clients. Although it once had many dial-up customers, we didn’t even market that site when it did have the option of signing up for dial-up Internet access. Our business is selling services to other ISPs.
Each of these letters from Bloomingdale’s are mostly the same rhetoric, and they each demand that I remove the content within five days. My thoughts for Bloomingdale’s are as follows:
Five days are up, Bloomingdale’s. Let’s shit or get off the crapper. Bring on the lawsuit and let’s see what the Internet public thinks of it. Maybe I will sue you back for being disastrously lame in your online acuity. My sense of the matter is that your legal and marketing departments should borrow a brain cell from a store clerk and stop fighting over just one.
At first, I was torn between whether to let you know just how badly you need my services to avoid coming off as a douchebag company, or whether to let others decide whether you are a douchebag company. I chose the latter, but you should probably read more of my work to determine the former. A better strategy to your online marketing efforts seems desperately in order.
Bloomingdale’s Demand Letters
Before I leave you to review the Bloomingdale’s demand letters I received, I want to say this:
Bloomingdale’s, Bloomingdale’s, Bloomingdale’s … nanny nanny boo boo. I used your name again. When you write up that lawsuit, just be sure to spell my name right.
Just one more outrageously funny thing I must mention is the Bloomingdale’s expressed concern for their name appearing in meta tags. That makes it seem even clearer to me that they are stuck in the “Miami Vice” and “Chaka Kahn” era.
Hello? Year 2011 calling Bloomingdale’s! If you are paying attention, you should probably have somebody in your “brainiac” eye tee department read “SEO Meta Tags: Oh, You Must Be Another SEO Expert!“ Perhaps they should check out the meta tags on this page while they are at it.
MARIE CAMACHO
FACSIMILE: 646-429-7521/22
EMAIL: infringement.response@macys.com
2/16/2011
VIA E-MAIL
Re: Notice of Infringement on the Bloomingdale’s Trademark
To Whom It May Concern:
This office is counsel to Macy’s, Inc., its subsidiaries, and operating divisions, including those operating Bloomingdale’s department stores (herein referred to as “Bloomingdale’s”.) Bloomingdale’s is the owner of all rights, title and interest in and to the BLOOMINGDALE’S® name and trademark, which is the basis for an extensive family of trademarks and service marks. The BLOOMINGDALE’S® family of marks is the subject of numerous active registrations with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a wide range of products and services. Bloomingdale’s has continuously invested substantial time, money and effort in the marketing and sale of products and services represented by this mark nationwide. As a result, the BLOOMINGDALE’S® name has become famous. It represents an exceptional level of consumer recognition and goodwill and is a property of incalculable value to the company.
Bloomingdale’s recently became aware of your use of the Bloomingdale’s trademark in meta tags (and/or hidden text) at http://www.********* used to attract Internet traffic to your web site. Your use of this trademark to attract Internet traffic is an obvious attempt to capitalize upon the goodwill associated with Bloomingdale’s for your company’s benefit by diverting buyers. More particularly, the Lanham Act, 15 U.S. Code Section 1117 provides for recovery of profits and damages, as well as a sum of up to three times the amount of damages for violations of Section 1125(a).
Accordingly, demand is made that you immediately cease-and-desist from any further use of the Bloomingdale’s trademark name in the meta tags (and/or hidden text) on your web site. Additionally, we must receive your written assurances that you will make no use of Bloomingdale’s registered mark in your business affairs in the future.
Provided you immediately comply with our reasonable demands, a lawsuit may be avoided. If your unauthorized use of Bloomingdale’s intellectual property continues and we do not hear from you within five (5) days of the date of this letter, my client has already authorized the filing of a suit against your company, seeking immediately injunctive relief and all damages allowable under the law.
We shall be monitoring your website and await your response in writing to this office. Should you have any questions or comments regarding Bloomingdale’s position in this matter, please contact me via e-mail. Nothing herein shall constitute a waiver of any of Bloomingdale’s rights in law or in equity, all of which are expressly reserved.
Thank you for helping us protect our brand. If you are authorized to use our intellectual property and believe you have received this in error, please provide the name and number of your contact within the company in order to verify your use and close the matter.
Sincerely,
Marie Camacho
MARIE CAMACHO
FACSIMILE: 646-429-7521/22
EMAIL: infringement.response@macys.com
2/23/2011
Re: Notice of Infringement on the Bloomingdale’s Trademark
To Whom It May Concern:
This office is counsel to Macy’s, Inc., its subsidiaries, and operating divisions, including those operating Bloomingdale’s department stores (herein referred to as “Bloomingdale’s”.) Bloomingdale’s is the owner of all rights, title and interest in and to the BLOOMINGDALE’S® name and trademark, which is the basis for an extensive family of trademarks and service marks. The BLOOMINGDALE’S® family of marks is the subject of numerous active registrations with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a wide range of products and services. Bloomingdale’s has continuously invested substantial time, money and effort in the marketing and sale of products and services represented by this mark nationwide. As a result, the BLOOMINGDALE’S® name has become famous. It represents an exceptional level of consumer recognition and goodwill and is a property of incalculable value to the company.
Bloomingdale’s recently became aware of your use of the Bloomingdale’s trademark in meta tags (and/or hidden text) at http://www.*********.com used to attract Internet traffic to your web site. Your use of this trademark to attract Internet traffic is an obvious attempt to capitalize upon the goodwill associated with Bloomingdale’s for your company’s benefit by diverting buyers. More particularly, the Lanham Act, 15 U.S. Code Section 1117 provides for recovery of profits and damages, as well as a sum of up to three times the amount of damages for violations of Section 1125(a).
Accordingly, demand is made that you immediately cease-and-desist from any further use of the Bloomingdale’s trademark name in the meta tags (and/or hidden text) on your web site. Additionally, we must receive your written assurances that you will make no use of Bloomingdale’s registered mark in your business affairs in the future.
Provided you immediately comply with our reasonable demands, a lawsuit may be avoided. If your unauthorized use of Bloomingdale’s intellectual property continues and we do not hear from you within five (5) days of the date of this letter, my client has already authorized the filing of a suit against your company, seeking immediately injunctive relief and all damages allowable under the law.
We shall be monitoring your website and await your response in writing to this office. Should you have any questions or comments regarding Bloomingdale’s position in this matter, please contact me via e-mail. Nothing herein shall constitute a waiver of any of Bloomingdale’s rights in law or in equity, all of which are expressly reserved.
Thank you for helping us protect our brand. If you are authorized to use our intellectual property and believe you have received this in error, please provide the name and number of your contact within the company in order to verify your use and close the matter.
Sincerely,
Marie Camacho
MARIE CAMACHO
FACSIMILE: 646-429-7521/22
EMAIL: infringement.response@macys.com
3/2/2011
To Whom It May Concern:
In order to avoid formal legal action, we are writing once more to follow up to our earlier letter to you regarding your use of Macy’s Inc. trademark (Bloomingdale’s) in the meta data of your website http://www.*********.com. As explained in our previous letter, Macy’s Inc. has well established rights in this mark and it is well known to consumers throughout the world.
As you know, Macy’s Inc. recently became aware of your unauthorized use of its trademark and sent you a letter requesting that you cease and desist from such use (and confirm same in writing). As of this date, we have not received a response from you about this matter, and the infringing content still appears in the code of your website. Your failure to act upon receipt of our notice underscores that your use is willful, exposing you to up to three times the amount of damages typically awarded for violations of Section 1125(a).
Your infringing use of our property is an obvious attempt to legitimize your website and/or divert traffic from this company’s authorized site. Accordingly, we reiterate our demand that you terminate the use of our brand in the meta data of your web site, and provide written assurances that you will make no use of Macy’s Inc.’s marks or other intellectual property in your business affairs in the future.
Provided you immediately comply with our reasonable demands, a lawsuit may be avoided. If your unauthorized use of our intellectual property continues and we do not hear from you within five (5) business days of the date of this letter, we reserve the right to pursue any and all remedies without further notice, including the filing of a suit against you seeking immediate injunctive relief and all damages allowable under the law. We shall be monitoring your website and await your response in writing to this email address.
Thank you for helping us protect our brand. If you are authorized to use our intellectual property and believe you have received this in error, please provide the name and number of your contact within the company in order to verify your use and close the matter.
Nothing herein shall constitute a waiver of any of Macy’s rights in law or in equity, all of which are expressly reserved.
Sincerely,
Marie Camacho
Photo Credit: Combination enema and douche syringe by Shattonbury via Wikipedia
If you are marketing something online, give me a moment to show you how to screw it all up. Since I know a lot of people shudder at all the sacrifices associated with marketing done well, I want to show you an example of how badly it can go wrong if you succumb to being shortsighted and misinformed.
This exemplifies so much of what is wrong with today’s Internet, and why Google keeps splitting skulls on worthless website owners. It shows a downward spiral of desperation of a car dealer, and a trend that is so widely followed in other businesses that it relieves me of wondering why companies suffer from dwindling market share.
This really should open your eyes if you are trying to take the quick and easy road to your SEO (search engine optimization) and social media marketing. If this example does not show the pitfalls of shortcuts and the benefits of playing by the rules, nothing will. I know that you will probably not finish reading this, but then, that is exactly the problem … shortcuts are popular. I made an audio version, in case that will help.
In this case, it involves a car dealership in Indianapolis, Indiana that operates by the name Ray Skillman. For all I know, this fella may be a delightful car dealer. He may even be the kind of guy I would personally like, enough to buy a whole fleet of cars. In fact, his story sounds really great, but it seems that this guy has a reckless streak of delegating his business future.
On the surface, it appears that whomever is making their marketing decisions has chosen to believe an “easy money” approach to SEO and social media, or otherwise perhaps just wants to damage the company deliberately. My guess is that they simply believed a good pitch of SEO lies from a bad search engine optimizer, instead of using diligence. I could make guesses all day long, but I want you to give you what I know about the Ray Skillman auto dealerships, and help you to figure this one out.
I previously wrote about the high level of absurdity of car dealers using social media, and it really is a worthwhile read. This Ray Skillman Auto Group seems to be trying to set the bar at an all new low. Low enough that it seems they are quickly dropping off the net, despite all of their frantic actions.
Ray Skillman Dropping Off the ‘Net?
Based on statistical data, it appears that Ray Skillman Auto Group has messed up bad enough to get virtually slaughtered online. It was bad enough for it to hit my RADAR, and it gave me adequate material to send a warning slap. I will tell you why, but better yet, I will tell you just how badly they are ripping themselves a virtual new orifice when it comes to website traffic, and future search engine rankings. It will be even more obvious as they endure the effects of Google’s Farmer Update of late February 2011, just in time for the car industry’s busy spring and summer sales seasons. Google’s “Farmer Update” was designed to wipe out website farms, and this one will probably yield some pretty bad crops from Google.
Before I show you the company’s new orifice, let me explain that they seem to actually want to reach the auto buying market of the Indianapolis area. Although they are very misguided, I think they comprehend the importance of the Internet for their business, just like you. In fact, it only took me a moment to find that they have a unique domain name for each of the entities as follows:
Abundant SEO Screwups
Ray Skillman Auto Group
Ray Skillman Ford
Ray Skillman Chevrolet
Ray Skillman Buick
Ray Skillman Northeast Buick GMC
Ray Skillman Buick GMC
Ray Skillman GMC
Ray Skillman Classic Cars
Ray Skillman Collision Center
Ray Skillman Hyundai
Ray Skillman Southside Hyundai
Ray Skillman Hyundai West
Ray Skillman Kia
Ray Skillman Auto Center
Ray Skillman Shadeland
Ray Skillman Kia West
Ray Skillman Mazda
Ray Skillman Northeast Mazda
Ray Skillman Mazda West
Ray Skillman Mitsubishi
Ray Skillman Suzuki
Ray Skillman Buy Here Pay Here
Is Ray Skillman Playing Too Much Defensive SEO?
I understand the importance of “defensive SEO”. Heck, my examples in this area are the subject of case studies. Ranking for your own brand name, in multiplicity, is important. Nobody wants to become a “Suture Express” case (yeah, Google it if you are not sure what I mean). The problem here is that it seems they are using frantic tactics for defense, and abysmal strategy.
There is little or no tangible value for the consumer being expressed in their visible efforts. Even their “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” update to the 55 fans of their Facebook page was just another sales pitch to chime in with “It’s going to be a beautiful day… a perfect day to come out and look around!” They should really take the time to read this article about Facebook marketing titled “Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness“. Their Twitter usage is just as bad, too. They are still trying to use interruption marketing rather than building equity in social media.
So, Skillman, do you want me to have a happy holiday, or do you want me to come out and have a crappy time with a pushy car salesman? Don’t tell me your salesmen are not pushy, either. When I get spammed by you from The Philippines, a logical assumption is that it is in your company culture.
Skillman Auto Group and The Philippines?
My introduction to Skillman was in a spammy comment on my blog. The comment originated in Makati, The Philippines.
The commenter whipped out a blurb of horrible English to tout the value of social media for car dealers. They claimed to have shopped at a dealership in Indianapolis, Indiana, so I thought that was a kind of long trip from Makati, The Philippines just to buy a car.
Not only did they shop for a car thousands of miles away, they used a URL from Ray Skillman’s website as their own URL in the commenter profile. They must be a big fan, right? Otherwise, the comment seems a bit fishy? Well, I guess maybe they swam from The Philippines to go car shopping and they picked up a little fishiness along the way.
Look, if this guy is pulling in customers from clear across the Pacific Ocean to buy a car, and use his website address when they comment on blog articles about auto dealer social media marketing, more power to him. According to what I see from his dwindling SEO and social media results, this is not likely the case. Instead, it looks like a cheap and easy way to get penalized by Google and other search engines, and to annoy people with more spam (as if we don’t already have enough). Let’s also not forget that a blog is social media, and social media is often very unkind to spammers.
Here is a quote from Google Webmaster Central about using comment spam as part of a strategy. Yes, this is actually in Google’s words:
“Comment spammers are often trying to improve their site’s organic search ranking by creating dubious inbound links to their site. Google has an understanding of the link graph of the web, and has algorithmic ways of discovering those alterations and tackling them.”
As long as Skillman is actively offending people with their social media efforts with pitchy crap and spamming blog comments, there is no wonder why they are so busy playing defense with their SEO efforts.
Ray Skillman Auto Dealership Websites Sinking in The Pacific
Let me share what I discovered when I looked at just a couple of third-party resources for Ray Skillman’s dealership websites. I will show you results from Alexa.com and WebsiteGrader.com. I chose these, because they are well known measures of websites, and they are easy for people to understand the results. This SEO Screwup May Hurt a Bit
What Does Alexa.com Say About Ray Skillman Dealerships?
Alexa ranks websites according to their known popularity, and the smaller the number, the better. Google is number one, Facebook is number two, YouTube is number three, aWebGuy.com is somewhere in the 130,000’s (still top 0.45% most trafficked), and etcetera. Alexa is not perfect, but it is pretty compelling when you see multiple of Skillman’s websites dropping in ranking by a million points or more over the past 30 days, and seven of them disappearing completely. This is a bad sign of doing something seriously wrong.
I took an average from 22 of Ray Skillman Auto Group websites and here is what I found:
90 Day Average of Ranked Domains:
9,498,928 average across 16 domains (the rest were not measurable). The best rank was 1,477,739 and the worst rank was 11,867,267
30 Day Average of Ranked Domains:
8,491,088 average across 11 domains (half were not measurable). The best rank was 2,766,597 and the worst rank was 21,187,719
So, are they moving up or down? If you look again, you can see that on a 30 day basis, even their best individual ranking was worse by 1,288,858. Worse than that is the disappearing act of seven more domains. Yes, there were seven of them which dropped completely off the RADAR!
I’d call it a game and throw in the towel before I threw another single dollar at the horrific tactics and utter lack of strategy that the SEO working for Ray Skillman Auto Group is using. My experience says that it will cost them many times whatever they are paying the search engine optimizer.
What Does Website Grader Say About Ray Skillman?
Website Grader uses information about the website to assign a numeric grade. It is explained on their website as follows: “The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data , website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.”
For the Ray Skillman Auto Group websites that I checked on Website Grader, the results did not look so good. Of course, I am a master of understatement. Fine, it looked like a murder scene, OK? Here is what I found from the websites:
Highest Grade: 86
Lowest Grade: 21 Average Grade: 64.6
The results are not just bad, but it shows a huge shortcut from trying to do things well. A website should be ready before it is ever even marketed … even in spam. For comparison purpose, and of course never to brag, this blog has a ranking of 99.8.
Ray Skillman Can Still Win!
With all of these business entities operating under the Ray Skillman Auto Group umbrella, just consider this: If they could increase their profit from SEO and social media marketing by just $1,000 per company, per month, it would add up to $252,000 per year. Even with a miserably low goal like that, they could expect a much greater increase in following years. That $252,000 per year could help them to afford a good SEO strategy, and improved social media marketing reach and response rate.
The trouble seems to be that they may not yet realize that a higher return on investment requires a responsible investment, first.
That, my friends, shows the difference between doing something, and doing something well. Rip me a new one if you like. My ears are wide open.
One more thing! Don’t take this wrong, because I love cars. I love them enough to drive them at over 200 miles per hour, race them at tracks all across the USA, and slap those who abuse them with terrible marketing shortsightedness.
Here are some other automotive-related articles from my petroleum-guzzling marketing head:
