marketing Archives - Page 38 of 41 by Mark Murnahan

Suture Express, Inc. CFO Brian Forsythe Screws Wrong SEO

Brian Forsythe of Suture Express, a leading Johnson & Johnson Ethicon surgical suture supplier that promotes “cheap surgical suture supplies”, made a decision to rejuvenate the failing sutureexpress.com website. Naturally, he contacted a search engine optimization provider to suture the damage. In fitting with Suture Express’ core value of “cheap surgical supplies” he contacted a friend with whom he could make a great deal. What he did not realize is how much “cheap” can haunt a company, and especially as it involves selling surgical sutures and outright lying to the SEO provider and not paying him. Note: Stealing information from a search engine optimizer and website developer is not a good way to do more business. What amazes me is that some companies still fail to grasp the reach of the Internet or the power of truth against fraud.

Suture Express Cheap Johnson & Johnson Surgical Sutures? Yes Cheap Surgical Supplies!

Brian Forsythe claimed that Suture Express paid $150,000 to build sutureexpress.com and admitted that they made some pretty big marketing mistakes. Forsythe set out to make it right, but only made it worse when he contracted with a skilled SEO and did not pay the bill. The prior costly marketing mistakes made by Ed Kuklenski, Suture Express’ CEO at the time of the $150,000 disaster yielded only $50,000 gross revenue in the following year according to Forsythe. Forsythe stated that customers had refused to use their website and that it was too slow and ineffective in meeting the Suture Express customer needs and expectations.

It seems that cheap did not fit the bill in this instance, so the fax machine is still the primary method of taking orders. Forsythe claimed that the CEO, Ed Kuklenski had refused to present the proposed budget for site redevelopment, search engine optimization, and social media marketing services to the board for approval. Forsythe cited that since Ed Kuklenski had previously made too big a mistake on the website development that it would shame the CEO to request further money to rectify the mess. Instead, the company CFO, Brian Forsythe, decided to structure payments toward the proposed services in smaller amounts that would each come under the limit that must be approved by the board. Forsythe signed what was to have been the first of multiple contracts and claimed that payment had been sent. Brian Forsythe lied, the checks never came, and he stopped taking calls.

Is Suture Express a Fraud?

I am not an attorney, but what Brian Forsythe did on behalf of Suture Express as the CFO would probably stand out bad in any court of public opinion. Not only did Forsythe agree to a series of contracts to circumvent his board, he also signed a contract and said that the check was in the mail.

With a signed contract in hand and the Chief Financial Officer’s word that the check had been sent, it seemed safe to produce a report and a plan to achieve Suture Express’ Internet marketing goals. I provided the report, and Suture Express received the benefit of initial plans to improve their search engine ranking. Again, I am not an attorney, but I do recall hearing terms like “Theft by Deception” and “Fraud” somewhere. I am not sure what legal terms apply, but in any case, good business ethics do not seem to be this company’s strong point.

Beating the Surgical Suture Supply Competitors

Suture Express’ ill-considered plan to one-up the competing surgical supply companies had all the making of failure from the very beginning. Stealing from a top-level SEO just sealed the deal. This should be no surprise from a company that claimed to produce between six and seven hundred million per year in revenue (you believe that, right?), yet bragged in their marketing about using duct tape to fix an office toilet seat rather than buying a new one. That is how cheap they are, and they are proud of it. Ladies, can we hear from you on this topic? They are using duct tape to fix a toilet seat, but spent $150,000 on a website that does not work and irritates customers. Sorry ladies of Suture Express, the money for your toilet seat is at sutureexpress.com. Go there when you need to pee, like the rest of the surgical suture supply people around the world.

I am I kidding? No, they actually used the duct taped toilet seat in their marketing. Sure, people having surgery and hoping to live through it probably want that kind of “cheap”. That makes up for wasting $150,000 on a website, for certain.

Suture Express Cheap Sutures Acquired by “Diamond Castle Holdings LLC”

In what I can only imagine as a panic, Brian Forsythe and key operatives in the Suture Express marketing team decided that after costly failed attempts at selling surgical supplies online, they had to do something to advance their cheap surgical supply company. Instead of doing business with integrity, such as honoring a signed contract with the SEO, maybe the best thing to do was to sell the company again. I imagine it to sound something like this:

“Let’s sell Suture Express again! Selling a surgical suture supply company seems to work well. It has worked before, and to heck with Suture Express’ reputation, this is millions of dollars. We can buy a new SEO with that kind of money, and the new shareholders will never know better. Shareholders don’t get the Internet anyway.”

I can actually kind of expect this kind of logic from these people, because the company who purchased Suture Express in January 2010 is named Diamond Castle Holdings LLC. Really, a diamond castle is what people want to build when they buy cheap surgical supplies, right? Diamond Castle acquired Suture Express in a leveraged buyout from Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC. Does anybody want to guess the shareholders of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC and Diamond Castle Holdings LLC? I’ll bet we can find some pretty classy cheap surgical suppliers in there somewhere. I can imagine the pride they all shout about at the shareholder meetings. Can you make up a good cheer to suit this?

Ethicon Surgical Supply Truth, with Suture Express

What I know today answers a lot of questions of how America’s health care system is in shambles. I waited well over a year from the time that Brian Forsythe at Suture Express told me directly that a check was in the mail before I decided to share the truth. I never wanted to battle with the huge health care industry or to hurt a one-time friend who suckered me into it. In over a year of waiting for that check to arrive and watching Suture Express being sold twice for millions of dollars each time, I had to shake my head and wonder what went wrong. There were many instances when I missed what I knew as my one-time friend, Brian, who had served as the CEO, CTO and CFO of Suture Express, and any other position he could regain in the next sale of his company. He gained millions of dollars by selling a company and effectively reselling it multiple times. Some people call this genius, but some people would call him a conman. I did not judge him, because I knew him as a friend who came to me when he needed to market a company that had made huge and costly mistakes.

I should explain that Brian Forsythe was one of the people I credit the highest with my learning to drive race cars. I met Brian when I was learning to master driving Corvettes. As you can imagine, I trusted Brian Forsythe. We have been just a few feet apart in our Corvettes at 150 miles per hour and taken high speed turns where mistakes count dearly. I don’t do this with people I do not like or respect. After all, I have a family to come home to.

Brian Forsythe Porsche Club and Corvette Race Car Driver

Brian is an amazing race car driver, and he instructed me in driving to the absolute limits a Corvette can withstand. He has been in a car with me at 150 miles per hour and has coached me when I placed 4th in a competition with top drivers from all around the world. He was the guy who once said “Mark, you made the quantum leap today, and you will never see that much improvement in your driving skill again.” He was also the guy who consoled me as I frantically worried that I had finished a time trial at less than my capability. He had been timing me and assured me beyond my tears that I had done a smashing job. Yes, race car drivers are close like brothers, so it actually does trouble me to say how badly this man conducts business. It means that I will never see my friend on a racetrack for fear that he will treat human life the way he does his business … like a true liar and cheat.

Yes, you read it correctly, and I will defend it in a court of law … Brian Forsythe of Suture Express is a liar. I cannot say how often he does it, but I can prove multiple instances of Brian lying to a friend, so you go ahead and make your judgments how you like. I always figured that if a man will lie to his friend, it is generally a reflection of how he will treat people in business as well.

My opinion is that Ed Kuklenski, Brian Forsythe, Kurt Rall, Steve Boyer, and the rest of the executive team and marketing staff at Suture Express probably could have done well to just own up to their contract instead of selling out the little guy who just wanted to help his racing buddy.

When people tell the truth, there should be no harm to the person reporting it. Fairness is subjective, but factual data should never hurt. The day that the truth becomes damaging to the truth-teller, is the day I will give up and stop doing business. If you do not like the truth, stop reading my blog right now, because you would probably not like me. If you are in the Ethicon surgical sutures supply industry, the truth may either upset you, or it may delight you. In the end, it is only the truth.

I wonder how Diamond Castle Holdings LLC’s shareholders will feel about their acquisition. I don’t wonder too much, because I think if anybody facing a life-saving surgery knew that their sutures were building a diamond castle, that their holdings would perhaps include holding their breath and waiting for some surgical supplies by a company with more integrity. Really … Diamond Castle Holdings? Are you kidding me? Is that part of the big healthcare reform thing we keep hearing about?

How many people here on my blog want to finance a Diamond Castle when they get sick and need a doctor to stitch them up?

A Surgical Supply Question for Johnson & Johnson

Do you generally do business like Brian Forsythe at Suture Express? I wonder if you can sell any sutures that can stitch up this surgical marketing mess Brian and his coworkers made. I really wonder how Johnson & Johnson looks at companies promoting their Ethicon line of surgical sutures in this way. Will I get any answers?

About Surgical Suture Suppliers

I doubt that surgical sutures suppliers are all so shady. I would be delighted to assist a suture supply company like Ethicon by Johnson & Johnson, Suture Direct, Novartis, Angiotech, MPS Medical Supply, DemeTech or others.

I would like to add that I do not often say unkind things about companies or friends. This is an instance where I believe that it is in the public’s interest and that Suture Express’ shareholders, prospective customers, and even competing surgical suture suppliers should know what happens when you treat people with dishonesty. Especially the ones who already proved they know their way around SEO. Just see my comment on the article “Ethicon Sutures: Endo Surgical Sutures” to see what I mean.

Do Potential Customers Know They Need You?

Will Your Customers Wait for a Flat Tire?

Do your potential customers know that they need your product or service offering? You may be surprised to find that many marketing shortcoming are not only in lack of exposure, but also because potential customers failed to see a need … or enough need to do business with you. Maybe you have addressed this question before, but perhaps I can help you with a different spin.

Imagine First Generation Drivers

Back when cars first gained popularity as a mode of transportation, most people did not know much about them. The first generation drivers were pretty clueless about the new “horseless carriages”, but they sure were eager to learn. They had a lot of crashes back in those days. I can imagine why they crashed. Just picture the kids back then having to actually hand write their text messages on paper!

Try to imagine the days before anybody had a father to nag them about checking their tires. Cars need maintenance, but in the beginning, most people didn’t know anything at all about tire care. Drivers overlooked maintenance and had a lot of breakdowns. My father told of his first car, which was a Ford Model T Roadster. Stop right there, I am not all that old. My dad was about a hundred and twenty something when I was born. Anyway, he said it seemed like he blew a tire every time he turned a corner. This created a need for better tires. Not just a need for better tires, but also used tires, tire repair, tire changing, and of course some good tools for changing the tires. All of the sudden, there was an emerging market. It became a pretty huge market that made many people such as the Firestone family abundantly wealthy. Tires were expensive, and people tried to use them as long as they could. They would drive them until they blew out. It is why the term “tire kicking” is still used today. Back then, people would kick the tires because if the tires had been repaired, kicking them would help them to know if there was a “boot” in the tire. No, not the kind of boot on your foot, but a piece of rubber that was used inside the tire to repair it.

Now, back to the Firestone family, the Firestone’s did not get wealthy only because there was a market need. They helped people to understand their need, and they did this better than the rest of the tire companies who competed with them.

How Would You Market Tires?

When you imagine your market, try to think like the earliest tire companies. Pretend that you are the first company to try and explain to people about tires. What would you do, and what would you say? Would you wait until their tired blew out and they knew they had a need, or would you try to help them to be safer by knowing when their tires were getting too old? Would you teach them about tire pressures and how to make their tires last longer, or would you hope they wore them out sooner so you could sell more? TIP: Even tire companies selling the same tire but who help customers prolong their tire life have “better tires” because they last longer.

Think about how you would reach those early drivers. How would you let them know, not only that you exist, but how you would impress upon them that they need your tire store and not just the closest tire store to where their next tire blows out. How far would you reach to grow that market if the big obstacle was to help people understand that they are safer when you are their tire guy?

Exposure is a huge component of marketing, but never forget that there are already a lot of people who know about you, but do not realize how much they need you, or why you sell “better tires” than the others.

People Don’t Repair Good Tires

People do not repair good tires that hold air. This occurred to me as I consider the Internet marketplace. A lot of people who really need the marketing services which I provide just don’t know how much it can help or how bald their tires are. Do you need a better tire seller?

Are You Too Good at Your Job?

Being too good at your job can damage your vision. What I mean is that when you are too closely involved, it can become easy to miss something that is right under your nose. It seems that a lot of people are their own worst enemy when it comes to their business, and especially as it relates to their marketing. I hear it all the time that a client will hold onto delusions that they know their market inside and out. They blame the industry, their customers, or the economy for problems instead of realizing they have made some mistakes. The truth is that they are often just too closely involved. I am sure you have seen something that you can relate this to, right?

I even feel this way in my job a lot of times. Since I know a lot about Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), I forget that a lot of people are just not so familiar. If you are good at something, it is easy to forget that the world is made up of all types and that the more you specialize, the more you become blinded. Addressing this with clients is an interesting challenge to me, because I frequently provide concrete evidence to show them just how wrong they are and how much business they have been missing. Then I have to present it in a way that does not make them feel stupid for not seeing it and addressing it sooner. People hate feeling stupid, and I don’t always have such a soft hand at pointing things like this out. I am that guy who will tell people what they need to hear rather than candy-coating a turd and telling them what they want to hear. I am a great marketer but because of that, I lack the wasteful schmoozing that some people expect to get when they spend a lot of money. This is my example of being so focused that I don’t see so well. I hope that you can realize it if there are instances like this in your work, too. Recognizing it is a good step in the right direction … I think … or rather, I hope.

It is common to use bad judgment or to be complacent when addressing matters within your own industry. It is why people use the analogies of a cobbler with barefoot children or a plumber with leaky pipes. It is easy to just think we are so good at something that we know how long we can put a task off before things break. It can also be easy to think we are doing all the right things, while we are actually just making things worse. Allow me to share an extreme real life example.

Jeff is Too Good at His Job to be Sick

I am reminded of many years ago when I had a roommate who was a physician. He woke up one morning and he was very sick. He could barely stand up, but of course he didn’t need a doctor. He figured that since his abdomen hurt that he just needed some antacid. He swigged a big dose of about three different over-the-counter antacids and headed to work.

Later that day as he was doing rounds at the hospital, it got worse … a lot worse. I got a call from an old school friend’s mother that evening. It kind of surprised me because I had not spoken to this woman in the prior 15 or more years. She was calling for professional reasons, as she is a nurse who worked with Jeff (the roommate). She called to let me know that while Jeff was at work, he had become so sick that he needed an emergency surgery. His appendix had perforated and he was in really bad shape. He made the mistake of diagnosing himself and it finally took a doctor friend to force him to go to the emergency room where a formal diagnosis was made. His condition was worsening fast, and if not for the intervention, it would have been life-threatening in very short order.

Jeff is a sub-specialist with over 15 years of post-secondary medical training from some of the most prestigious medical schools in the world. He is extremely talented in his field of medicine, but he was just too close to see the problem. I am not a doctor, and even I knew enough to tell him to stop by the emergency department to drink a GI cocktail just to see if the pain went away. If not, it would be a sign of something worse. He didn’t take my tip, nor several coworkers advice throughout the day, and he suffered a lot for it.

Jeff’s instance makes a good example of just being so good at a job or too closely involved to have good judgment. I see business instances similar to this often enough to believe that most people can find a similar oversight in their work.

My work involves a lot of different markets, and I am always thinking about how to best reach my clients’ prospective customers. Not so unlike Jeff, I am my own worst patient. I think a lot of us are this way but we become too blind to recognize it. We get so wrapped up in our respective jobs that we put things off or make costly mistakes.

It is very likely that you are overlooking a lot of potential in your business, too. Recognizing the ailment is an important step to recovery. Don’t be a “Jeff”! Putting things off will often make for a much longer recovery.

Twitter is Useful but Blogging is Better

Twitter is a great place to gather useful information. It can also be a good place to find an audience of people who care about what you have to say. Twitter makes it easy to create a lot of business and personal connections. If you use Twitter with a little foresight, it can become an extremely valuable resource. If I did not believe this, I never would have spent the time and effort to write a book about Twitter, but blogging is even better. I am using Twitter as an example here, but much of this can be applied to other social media resources as well. What I wish to show is that many tools may be used for effective social media communications, and at the hub is a blog.

Many Twitter users have a blog, or even more precisely many bloggers have a Twitter account (or several). Blogs still outnumber Twitter users by hundreds of millions after all. Although Twitter can be useful, particularly in conjunction with a blog, it is not a silver bullet. I will explain this with data that I collected between March 2009 and March 2010, and provide charts to include comparisons as follows:

Twitter update (tweet) frequency and website traffic
Twitter followers and website traffic
Blog frequency and website traffic

Blogging is Better than Twitter, but Twitter is Still Useful

This is not a criticism of Twitter. I like Twitter, and I find a lot of great uses for the service. I meet a lot of wonderful people, I have interesting conversations, I learn from Twitter, and I share information with people using Twitter. However, it seems that while millions of business people have been fascinated by Twitter and a handful of other social media sites, it can be easy for them to overlook the even greater value of creating excellent website content, and doing it often. Social media can bring many people to a website, but consistent and high quality content development is key to keeping them coming back and keeping them telling their friends. This is extremely valuable to most business efforts.

In order to emphasize the importance of content creation (blogging), I will illustrate the side by side growth and reach of a Twitter account and a blog which were both created near the same time. The first blog post was on 7 December 2008 and my @murnahan Twitter account was created on 9 January 2009, so about a month apart. I used Twitter in conjunction with several other sites prior to this (copmagnet.com, stormmagnet.com, and others) but my @murnahan Twitter account and this blog create a good comparison. This is a one author blog and a one author Twitter account of about the same age.

Twitter Update (tweet) Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison

Many people believe that if they tweet at high velocity all day and night that it will bring huge traffic to their website. There has been some validity to this, but the landscape has changed. It should be obvious that influence is more important than simply yelling across a room and the same is true with Twitter. Here is a chart showing numbers of Twitter updates (tweets) compared with blog visits. I will add additional metrics later, but this may be an eye-opener to some people. Since lines on a tiny chart will not do this justice, I am providing the number of actual Twitter updates I sent during this period, below the chart. The high levels of traffic in the earlier part of the chart coincide loosely with a huge numbers of tweets, but then toward the more recent months you can see that traffic went back up (after I finished writing three books in 2009) while there were many thousands fewer tweets per month. Look at March 2009 with 9091 tweets compared to March 2010 with 175 tweets month-to-date.

Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar
9091	5969	1272	659	671	850	314	406	329	400	355	238	175

Twitter Followers and Website Traffic Comparison

A lot of Twitter followers should surely do the trick, right? It seems that there has been some amazing wool pulled over Twitter users’ eyes with this myth about Twitter followers. Sure, it is great to make a lot of connections, but how does that play into actual relevant website traffic? After all, website traffic is a common reason that a lot of people use Twitter. A squillion followers is a big dream for many people, but the way Twitter follower numbers relate to website traffic is not the same as some people may imagine. There is a lot more to building a brand and building website traffic than sending a bunch of tweets to a large number of followers.

I must say that in the beginning, Twitter was massively helpful in introducing people to this blog. In those days, people were retweet crazy, and it seemed that people retweeted everything I wrote. An example is an article I wrote about Twitter retweets … it was retweeted over 400 times. It was probably actually retweeted a lot more, but that is just what tweetmeme has on record.

Twitter helped to spread the word and create a lot of incoming links from many other social media sites as well. In May 2009, I wrote about how Twitter improves blog traffic (NOTE: “improves” and not just “increases”). In social media time, that was a long time ago. Twitter still holds great value that should not be overlooked or underutilized, but Twitter is different now.

Blog Frequency and Website Traffic Comparison

Twitter gets them there, but frequent content creation keeps them coming back.

Twitter can be instrumental in generating and cultivating an audience for a particular blog topic or service offering. A chart that cannot be overlooked is the one below which shows the direct relation of blog content creation and site visits. I used actual numbers of visits to my blog, so I multiplied the blog post numbers in order to be more visible in the chart. What I wanted to point out is how the lines follow a very similar course. While comparing nearly every metric of my website traffic, the one thing that relates more closely than any other is to continually create useful information for my readers. I hope that you will see this as an important focus in your efforts, too.

A blog is a hub for good social media outreach and is what keeps the machine moving. It is where you can reach more people with the information you want to share the most. All of the many related tools in your social media marketing strategy are fantastic and should be used to the best of your abilities. In the end, the tool that is expected to create more sales for your business is your website, so take good care of it and pay attention to the numbers.

If you have not already read the following articles, I encourage you to take time for these.

Social Media Tactics Without Social Media Strategy Fails

I look around the Internet and see a lot of social media tactics without any overall strategy. It often leaves me shaking my head when I see so-called social media marketers who offer nothing but setting up a couple of social media accounts then find a handful of people for their client to spout advertisements to. Maybe they even offer to do the spouting, but often without a real sound plan. It leaves little wonder why so many people are left to question the usefulness of social media in their business. It is a sad fact for many companies, but it can be fixed.

For the purpose of this article, let us look at the words tactic and strategy like the military does. A military tactic is an action that is implemented by a group of no larger than a division. A strategy addresses the planned outcome of the entire military operation. In social media terms, one way to look at a tactic is sending tweets on Twitter, while a strategy addresses how those tweets fit into the overall business plan and marketing objectives.

I suppose it should not be surprising that many people do not understand the difference between a social media tactic and a social media strategy. After all, most of the people implementing social media today are not marketers by trade, nor have a significant stake in the outcome. Many will say that they are marketers, but most really are not. They are technicians of marketing tools, but not practitioners of the trade. If this insults you, it shouldn’t. It is not saying that the receptionist who was put in charge of tweeting is any less important, or that the guy in accounting who created the last ad campaign is any less valuable as an accountant. We all have our own skill sets, and just because it is popular, you can still be cool if you are not a marketer.

Social Media Tactics Examples

I witness many social media consultants who promote setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts, fancying up the profile pages, and helping customers to find followers or fans. Sadly, this is about as useful as a hammer without a carpenter. These tactics are just creating tools, and without a strategy … an actual understanding of what to do next and why, companies are often left to receive terrible results and disappointment. A tactic without any function or objective in place is only useful on a very short term basis, and that is if they have luck on their side.

A common tactic I see is the social media consultant who tries very hard to reach a lot of people with entertaining messages like a funny video, a joke, or inspirational quote. They tell their clients to be fun, interesting, and engaging. They promote making a lot of friends by being themselves and making it personal. This is all just fine and dandy, but it is only a tactic. In the end, you may have a lot of people who like you but still lose a lot of time and money. The overall strategy of this social media tactic is that if you have a bunch of friends and they like you, it will be easier to sneak in your advertisement now and then and get your friends to help you spread it to the world. The problem is, these are only tactics, and there is really not a sound strategy. Friends are great, and we can all benefit from having more friends. I love the friends I meet via social media. I met my wife back in 2000 using social media. All the friends are fantastic, but those friends alone are not likely to come running make your mortgage payments. You need more to your strategy than this.

In an upcoming article I will show actual statistics which I have compiled regarding the effectiveness of tactics in contrast to strategy, but for now I want you to think about strategy more in terms of short and long-term objectives, and how you can improve yours.

Social Media Strategy: A Plan for Success

Let’s just say that you have a bunch of people following you on Twitter and a squillion fans on your Facebook Page. What are you going to do with that? Will you provide something that nobody else is doing? Do you have a strategy that is sustainable beyond the next Facebook update?

Let us use a restaurant as an example. If you have a restaurant, will you blast out your specials every day and hope people come to see you, then perhaps just keep lowering your sale price until this tactic begins to work? I hope that you don’t think that is a useful strategy. Try to think of strategy more like this: Create a contest among waiters to see which one will have more customers tag your restaurant in a Facebook photo or upload a picture of their good time with your awesome waiter on TwitPic and send it to you as a reply on Twitter. Create a special inauguration party for your latest “Mayor” on Foursquare. Integrate these tactics into an overall strategy to produce a sustainable marketing force of people who love what you do and love to tell their friends. Reward them with something fun, interesting, and preferably delicious. These are things people will remember, and ways to have other people interested, rather than just wasting time with basic advertising tactics.

Even Good Strategy Fails Without Implementation

A good strategy will still not benefit your company without implementation. If you find that you have a handful of tactics without a really solid and productive strategy, stop and take another look. It is not too late to start doing things better, but each day that slips by will mean more money down the drain.

Here is one more example of a strategy. My strategy is to provide something useful. I want to give you something you did not get elsewhere. I want to give you something valuable that you can use today and receive benefit. Using this strategy, a small portion of my readers contact me when they are ready to create and implement a strategy using tactics that work.