US Airways Consumer Scrutiny
I just read a blog article about a poor customer experience with US Airways. It got me to thinking about the ways we listen, and I think it could be described as two different types of ears.
Consumer Listening: Skeptical Ears
The first type of ears are those of a skeptical consumer. We have skeptical consumer listening skills which are pretty basic and instinctive. These are the ears we use to hear scandal and negativity. Most people have this set of ears cranked way up to hear anything they need to know as a consumer.
Consumer watchdogs are everywhere, and social media brings them out in a big way. In fact, it allows each and every one of us to be a consumer watchdog and to tell our story. Anybody with a bad experience can make a pretty loud sound using social media.
Consumer Listening: Marketing Ears
With a different set of ears we hear the marketing message of a company. We turn the sensitivity of those ears way down. These are the ears we use to hear all of the good things that a company does, and the reasons we should buy from them.
As a test of your ears, just consider it this way: Do you hear me better when I say that I want to provide you with my valuable SEO and social media marketing services (and I do), or when I warn you about ways you may be screwing up your SEO or social media marketing? You see! Your instinct is to hear what could hurt you, more than hearing things that can help you. This is why it takes so much more effort to spread a good marketing message than to spread a negative message about a company.
We have all heard that it takes many “rights” to correct a “wrong”, but what if you could turn the “wrong” into a “right” of sorts?
Turning Up the Marketing Ears
There are a lot of ways to turn up people’s marketing ears and help them to hear you. Ironically, it can sometimes come from whispering into their other set of ears … their skeptical ears. If you are running a business and somebody is talking about your brand, you should be listening to the negative and even using it to your advantage. I see it all the time that companies are either not paying attention, or they hear negativity about their brand but do not address it. They just hide their head in the sand like an ostrich and wait for things to blow over. What they often overlook is all the potential for benefit they may be missing. They see it only as damage, and often try to ignore it in hopes that it will go away. The truth is that it is not going away, and ignoring it only serves to cause a sense of passive aggression. It often makes people want to scream even louder about their distrust or discontentment.
US Airways Best and Worst Scenario
What if US Airways hears this message of discontent about their brand and ignores it? It means that they will further lose faith from this consumer, and also that of others he encounters … both online and offline. On the other hand, what if US Airways used it as an opportunity to regain his faith? What if they were able to improve his opinion of US Airways and even come to make him a fan of their company? Can you imagine the value of turning it completely around and showing a disgruntled consumer that you really do want to make them a happy customer?
I suspect that the disgruntled US Airways customer, Jeff Gibbard will soon have answers to whether US Airways is listening. In the meantime some skeptical consumer ears are perked, and just waiting for US Airways to whisper.
Update: 14 June at 7:30 p.m. USA Central TimeAmerica West is Listening
I would like to add that America West Airlines, which is the same company as US Airways (they merged in 2005) has been here and did nothing! They gave no reply, and made no attempt to apologize to Jeff Gibbard or even give an excuse.
Here is a screen capture from my visitor log which clearly shows that this article is visible, even to the noisy airline industry.
Turning away business from a customer with a fist full of money and a desire to buy what you sell may seem like a bad business tactic. For many people, turning away a customer is viewed as a tragedy, but in some cases it can produce great benefit. In fact, there are many instances where this tactic can be extremely profitable. I know, it sounds crazy, but let me explain. First, I want to be clear that this is a tactic versus strategy, so don’t start trying to make a bunch of money turning people away just yet.
Examine, for a moment, a couple of reasons it can be important to turn away business, and how it may benefit your business to do so. Face it, not all customers are great customers. There are bad customers in every business … yes, I said every business. Even if you own a coin operated vending machine company and never have to face the customer, there is such a thing as a bad one. There are ways to turn away business that are tactful and useful, and sometimes we just have to learn when it is right to say “no” to the customer.
What brought me to write about this today was that I recently expressed selectiveness to a friend who is in need of marketing services. It is not a matter of arrogance at all, but in my line of work, there are very good reasons I absolutely must turn away business. I only have a limited amount of time to render my services, and if I am spending time working with people who do not pay well, have a bad product offering, or are difficult to work with, I may as well stay in bed. Working with a client for the money alone would be miserable to me, and likely to them as well. Mine is an extreme case, but in every service industry role where time, creativity, and knowledge are the product, it is very important to seek the right customers and stop wasting time with the ones who hold us back. Turning away business can be a painful transition for those unfamiliar with the concept, but it can save a lot of grief.
Opportunity Cost
(economics) The cost of an opportunity forgone (and the loss of the benefits that could be received from that opportunity); the most valuable forgone alternative.
When you are striving to be profitable, you must consider opportunity cost. That is the cost of opportunities that you will miss by taking on each customer. Any time you take on a new customer, there is a loss of potential opportunities elsewhere that could slip by because you are too busy.
In good and proper business transactions we can see that the customer is just as fortunate to make a purchase as the seller is to sell their product or service. If you focus on a better value proposition, competition really does not affect you as much. I have created many instances where a client raises their prices because their offering is worth more than they realized, and they were able to qualify it in their marketing message and quantify it in their business volume. This is the way it is supposed to be, after all. If somebody is willing to trade their hard-earned dollars, the seller clearly has something they want or need. If it is something with a limited supply and a sufficient demand, turning away business is sometimes not just the best option, but rather the only option. That is basic supply and demand, but there are still other reasons to turn away business.
The Arrogance of Purchasers
As purchasers, we often do not see things clearly and we become arrogant with our spending. There is always somebody else out there willing to sell things as if they are a commodity even when they are not. These sellers will offer something that is inferior, and price it low enough to capture the business of those who cannot understand the value difference. What this seller often misses out on is longevity and sustainable profitability. They do not understand the notion of turning away business for any reason, and the value it represents. This sort of selling as a commodity affects most businesses at some point (either internally or externally), and it is important to address it in your marketplace. In service industries, especially, it is a tragic end for many companies to fall into the trap of selling as if they are a commodity just to keep doing business … profitable or not.
Commodity
A commodity is a good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. It is fungible, i.e. the same no matter who produces it.
A valuable lesson for both buyers and sellers is to recognize when something is not a commodity. Seeking qualitative differences is important to good purchasing, and conveying these differences is an essential of good marketing.
Overcoming Commodity Selling
I write what I know, so I am using examples from experience in my own companies to illustrate my point. Perhaps if you see that I live by my own advice, you can at least view it as sincere. When I consider people selling something as a commodity that is indeed not a commodity, it is easy to find examples. Let’s take web hosting as an example (the service that keeps websites up and running). I have been in the web hosting business as a wholesale web host selling to hosting resellers for a decade. Is it the same thing anywhere you go? Well, without a long drawn out explanation, I can say that it clearly is not a commodity. My company’s web hosting prices reflect the millions of dollars invested in higher quality equipment and network architecture that sets us apart. We turn away a lot of business, and thank goodness, because it allows us to keep the quality standards extremely high for the customers who want something better.
Is SEO a Commodity?
Another absolute case of a non-commodity that is often sold as such is marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) services. I see people every day who sell dreadfully ineffective but cheap marketing and SEO services. Tragically, I find many people in the marketing and SEO field who will drop their prices to try and compete as if they offer a commodity. In my line of work as a marketing consultant and enterprise SEO, it is pretty clear to me that my clients receive more quantitative benefit from the transaction than I do. Maybe you have a similar case of providing great value as well, and if so, it is best to recognize it. Sure, I get to earn a good living, but the dollars the client gets in return far exceed what I am paid. It kind of makes me like a money duplicating machine to clients. Would it make sense for me to take on every project that comes my way? Of course not, and especially considering that much of my profit is derived from performance-based contingency SEO. So I refuse to sell it as a commodity, which is why I turn down the vast majority of potential clients who approach me. It is stupid? Some may say “yes”, but my clients are fortunate for it, and my reputation has become valuable because of this.
Do You Want Cake or Do You Want Cake?
I also see the benefit to turning away business very clearly in another of the companies my wife and I own and operate, in the cake and confectionery business. It is a very busy time of year for cakes. There are a lot of weddings, anniversaries, and graduations this time of year, in addition to the constant baby showers, birthdays, company parties, and etcetera. Designer wedding cakes and custom gourmet cupcakes require a lot of time, creativity, and skill. If we tried to take on every customer, it would degrade the product for all customers. So we turn away business to keep quality standards high. This makes it better for business on both sides, the customer and the company.
If you are not selling a commodity, it is unwise to try and compete as if you do. There will always be somebody willing to cut their own business throat to beat you out of a sale just to drive revenue. Discovering and conveying your value proposition is essential. Sometimes that means that you will need to start turning away business.
Enterprise SEO Sounds Great: But What is Enterprise?
I often find myself visiting with everything from small emerging SEO clients to mid-market SEO clients and large enterprise SEO clients. A commonality I find is that each of them have a hard time justifying the initial cost of SEO services, but I want to help explain how they are able to do so. In each instance, there is a clear understanding that they need SEO. After all, it is what makes them visible to more people searching to buy what they sell. Let’s not get silly and start questioning whether SEO works or not.
We surely all know that SEO provides an excellent return on investment when it is done just right. If you don’t know this already, there are a squillion solid case studies to back it up. If you are reading this, you know very well that it works. I wrote this and SEO’d it for you, and now you are here to read it, so let’s not be coy. You want more people to see your brand and your value proposition, and this is something that enterprise search engine optimizers do well. The challenge lies in how to justify the stroke of a pen that puts your money into the SEO’s bank account. So let’s look at that and consider how everything from the enterprise SEO service level all the way down to a “let’s fail fast and get it over with” marketing budget is justified.
What is Enterprise SEO?
Let us first look at the term, enterprise SEO. What does it really mean? Somehow the word enterprise has been used to define an elite level of businesses that spend a lot of money on marketing and have thousands of employees in huge skyscrapers. Let’s put that definition of enterprise to bed right now, and start looking at this a bit differently. I like the definition provided by Princeton University which states as follows:
Enterprise: “a purposeful or industrious undertaking (especially one that requires effort or boldness)”
Using this definition, it seems more obvious how we can categorize SEO and create a description of “enterprise SEO” as opposed to other SEO … call it “hobby SEO” or maybe “wasteful SEO”. This is because, as the definition describes, it is a “purposeful or industrious undertaking”, which is too often not the case at all with SEO. I often witness huge errors when the initial cost of SEO overrides the value of good SEO. I mean, let’s consider this: If you are shopping around for search engine optimization services, are you likely to look for the SEO with the highest cost, or the one with the lowest cost? If you do not recognize this as an absurd question, you should. If low cost is the biggest deciding factor, you have it all wrong. Instead, I want you to imagine seeking the search engine optimizer with a better strategy and a bid that you can justify to yourself, your company board members, your wife, or whomever you answer to.
Tragically, the initial cost of SEO is a big factor to a lot of people, while the “effort or boldness” part of the enterprise definition is devalued due to fear of loss overriding expectation of gain … even when it is substantiated with logic. I stand behind what I said in the article “Fear Affects Success in Marketing More Than Logic“, because I know from experience that it is true.
Common View of Enterprise SEO
Considering a common view of enterprise SEO, it is easy to imagine a team of bright and creative marketers gathered in a meeting room providing consultation to the big company’s internal SEO staff. They craft plans based on a lot of facts and figures, they meet repeatedly to define objectives, they strategize at great length, and they carve out a huge piece of marketing budget justified by real-world estimates based on known variables. Then it is time for implementation on a grand scale to put all of those great plans into profit-producing action.
Enterprise SEO starts to look really costly, but the risks also start to look smaller with all of that valuable data and planning. Most people agree that search engine optimization would be a whole lot easier to justify in this scenario of the enterprise-level SEO campaign. After all, it is no longer a unicorn hunting expedition or an elf-chase … it is a real-world Internet marketing campaign. Large enterprises like Amazon.com, Intel, Pepsi, and eBay would not spend all of that time, effort, and money if it did not improve their bottom line. An important question is how to bridge the huge gap between your efforts and enterprise-level SEO efforts responsibly and without waste?
Bridging Unicorn Hunting SEO and Enterprise SEO
A big difference between the large-scale enterprise SEO campaign and lower-level efforts is how far it is pushed to the point of diminishing return. Let’s look at the bell curve and understand that enterprise SEO strives to reach the top of the curve or a little beyond, while cautious SEO is generally at the very bottom of the curve before the big rise. In any market, and in any medium, there is a point of optimum value to the company. While many smaller or fearful companies are out to “test the water” with their SEO campaign, the bold and purposeful enterprise is pushing forward as closely to the point of diminishing return as possible with their SEO, and often just a little beyond it. All the while, the cautious company is often only reaching the beginning of the curve and wasting time and money. In the process of either instance, much efficiency is lost along the way. There must be a good balance, and reaching that balance is where SEO is most successful.
The reality is that either level of SEO includes largely the same processes, while one is a matter of taking it to a higher “enterprise level”. At the enterprise level, the data samples get larger, the depth of market research is greater, the manpower is increased, and the action steps are more defined, but it requires the same overall steps and makes use of the same or similar skills and tools. Most waste occurs by failing to optimize the optimization.
Too minimal effort with SEO is the most common problem I find with companies. When they barely reach the edge of the bell curve, it is easy to give up early and assume it was all a waste of time and money. This is all because it was not performed with the “effort or boldness” within that definition of enterprise.
I see it more often than not that SEO proposals are dreadfully flawed on the side of what appears to be caution. It seems so much easier to ask for a smaller dollar amount and present a low-cost (and therefore low-results) plan. The same problem is seen by companies going to a bank for a loan and seeking too small amount of money. They are often turned down because their plan is flawed by seeking too small of an investment. If you doubt this, just ask any Small Business Administration financial assistance person, accountant, or commercial loan officer about downsides of underestimating. Businesses trying to work with too small of dollar amounts are very often doomed to fail, and all because they equate less money with less risk. In the real world, it just isn’t this way. Thinking too small is a common precursor to failure. You can take my word for it and save yourself the trouble, or you can go down that ugly path of failure and learn the hard way. Just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.
Enterprise SEO Means Less Risk
Companies of all sizes are more fearful than ever to implement effective marketing including SEO, because it requires money … scarce, elusive, and coveted money. So what often happens is that SEO companies, realizing their market, will give in and offer what companies say they want, whether it is the right answer for the client or not. In these instances, the SEO will address the client’s fears and misunderstanding about the business of search engine optimization, and capitalize on those fears by assuring them that even a minimal effort will do a lot to help. The problem here is that the minimized efforts often do not even begin the climb up the bell curve of successful market reach, and will leave the client disappointed by a lack of results. It is hard to call it an outright scam when it is what the client asks for, but it is hard to view it as ethical when it is not providing the best solution for the client.
Attempting to equate lower dollar amounts with lower risk is an easy mistake to make, but also a frequent cause of failure. Thinking bigger like the enterprise in the huge skyscraper is a good start. After all, every enterprise SEO client started somewhere, and they did not grow by thinking small.
I recently wrote about SEO Hourly Rates, and I received a lot of attention to the topic of SEO pricing methods. Now I would like to address one of the other popular SEO pricing methods, contingency SEO.
Contingency contracts have long been used by attorneys when a client either wishes to mitigate their investment risk in legal fees or cannot afford to pay for all of the legal cost upfront. Contingency contracts can also be leveraged properly for your search engine optimization (SEO). When the risk and the reward is equitably shared between the SEO professional and the client, a contingency SEO contract often makes sense. After all, it is easy to see why a professional will often do their best work when their income is dependent on winning.
Contingency SEO: The Client Perspective
Most companies understand paying a reasonable percentage of their profit to a sales representative, and contingency SEO is not so different in some ways. When the sales representative provides you with business, you provide them with remuneration.
Viewing your SEO provider as another sales representative is a simplified look at contingency SEO, but it is also important to give consideration to legal matters and preserving your company reputation. Ideally, you and the SEO company will have a unified long-term goal of success. Like sales reps, there are good and bad search engine optimizers, so it is important to have a similar approach to that of hiring a new sales representative, or more appropriately, taking on a new business partner.
Since proper SEO work requires a sizeable investment of time, you should be prepared to provide the SEO an upfront payment so that you are, indeed, sharing the cost equitably. Securing a contract with a quality SEO company would be too simple if not for an upfront cost. Clearly, all of your competitors would have done it by now if it was that easy.
Contingency SEO: The SEO Perspective
If I only had a nickel for every opportunity to provide my work upfront and receive a percentage of the profits, I would not offer hourly pricing for SEO services. Like the example of an attorney working for contingency, the SEO provider must be comfortable with the arrangement, and see good potential for gain. The SEO must consider the marketability of the product or service, how to measure the SEO results (gross profit, net profit, market share gain, etcetera), and accountability. There are a lot more ways for the SEO company to come out cheated in the end, so clear contracts and trust become important factors.
Because of the risks for the SEO professional, some ways that contingency SEO can be accounted for include full access to the client’s records, Website scripting to account for the traffic and report it to the SEO, or a separate Website owned by the SEO to measure the traffic and send it to the client. There are many other methods of accountability, but this is simply to say that accountability is often one of the greatest concerns for the SEO professional.
The Contingency SEO Contract
When approached with the opportunity for a proper and equitable SEO contingency contract, I take it very seriously, and I expect my client to do the same. After all, we should be in it together for mutual benefit. Just to be sure both parties understand the relationship, it is very important to spell it out in a contract. A well defined contract for contingency SEO will require much consideration of both parties’ interests, and will take some work for the contracting SEO provider. The client should expect to pay for this time, and for a careful review of the existing Website assets or liabilities. Without a thorough review and assessment of the client’s needs, expectations, and current market position, the SEO professional and client will not have all of the necessary facts to work with. The client should be reminded that if they are engaging the SEO, it is like calling the attorney of choice. It is best to call a great attorney rather than just the first one willing to take on your project. Similarly, the upfront retainer cost to review the case, as well as the depth of the assessment will vary.
Contingency SEO Bloodsuckers
Attorneys have often been referred to as bloodsuckers, and it may be the contingency contract that has caused their reputation. Attorneys are persecuted for receiving huge amounts of money for what looks like an easy job. To their credit, we must remember that there is always a reason the client asks for them to take the case on contingency. The risk is shared, and so must be the reward. Like the attorney, if the contingency SEO does not meet the expectations, neither party benefits. That means the professional has spent their time on the client’s behalf, with the only reward being lost time. The responsibility of maintaining a marketable product or service offering lies outside of the SEO professional’s control. This exposure to potential loss on the part of the SEO must be carefully considered.
Hourly rates for SEO (search engine optimization) and Web development are confusing. As a Web developer and SEO, I am very often asked to produce a Website development quote, without the client giving all of the facts. The most important thing to remember is that there is no apples-to-apples comparison.
Website Development Hourly Rates
When you compare the hourly rates of two different Website developers or SEOs, you are really only looking at a fraction of the picture. If “Web Developer A” charges $85 per hour, and “Web Developer B” charges $150 per hour, which one is a better deal? There is a missing variable in how much and how well either of them can produce the results. If “Web Developer B” has a decade of experience and can finish the same task in half of the time, “Web Developer A’s” hourly rate just became $170 per hour ($85*2).
Another strong factor is that although there are standards for Web programming, there are many “correct” ways to produce a project, and usually the “correctness” will come in different degrees. This requires a question of how correct you want it. Two Web developers will likely never produce the exact same results. Thus, the comparison of hourly rates is already flawed.
SEO Hourly Rates
When it comes to SEO, many of the tasks are even less defined than Web development. Determining the best SEO between “SEO A” and “SEO B” it is like comparing two brains, which stumps even the most brilliant Neurosurgeons. There are many skills that we share, but there are also many varying opinions on the best practices. There is only one number one position in each search engine for a given keyword or keyword phrase. That is the goal of the SEO, but the methods used to get there often vary greatly between SEOs.
Reduce Hourly Rate Confusion
Perhaps the most challenging and confusing thing about shopping for Website development or SEO is how much a Website should cost. As I have strongly suggested before, it is best to set a budget. Here is a clip from another of my blog posts:
“Hiding your expected budget is like going to a realtor and saying that you want to buy a house and hiding your budget. If they do not know your budget, they can show you homes all day but you will both be spinning your wheels and never get anywhere.”
When a Web developer or SEO provides a proposal based on only a portion of the client’s objectives, they will always be wrong. I can appreciate the notion of “shopping around”, but to shop without a budget serves nobody at all, and may land you with “Web Developer A” who can potentially cost you more. When it comes to shopping for SEO services, the largest cost is often in the cost of lost opportunities.
Getting the Right Cost Quote
I have produced quotes to shoppers who simply refused to give me the whole picture, only to have them compliment me greatly but say that they believe I am “out of their league”. The fact is that I write quotes ranging from a few thousand dollars on up to many tens of thousands of dollars. It is always based on the information I am given. No two companies place the same importance on Internet marketing, thus, their needs and expectations of both performance and cost will always be different. Without clarifying the needs and expectations for both parties, nobody wins.
