surgical supplies Archives by Mark Murnahan

Internet is a Body and Your Website is an Organ Transplant

I have an uncommon analogy for you to consider today. I sometimes feel a bit like a mad scientist slinking into my secret laboratory, just a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein. It seems especially real on days when I sit at this computer for sixteen hours, nap for three hours, and then return with my crazy mad scientist hairdo and coffee breath. Creepy? Perhaps, but it is always fun to exclaim “It’s Alive!” after it all comes together just right.

I realize that some people are squeamish about biology, but don’t worry, we are just imagining this for a few minutes. Think of it like a science fiction movie scene.

Try to picture the Internet as a sci-fi creature with living tissue, nerves, and blood vessels growing every day. It is alive and growing, and it has defense mechanisms just like most organic life forms. If you introduce a foreign object, it will either accept it, or it will reject it.

Now try to picture a surgical introduction of an organ transplant of a man-made synthetic tissue. Your website, along with the rest of your online branding assets, make up that donor organ. In the beginning, it is laid on the surface of the huge Internet organism, and surgically connected by way of new social networking efforts and a micro-web of hyperlinks to and from other websites. This is the toughest time for the transplant, and requires a lot of nurturing.

The donor organ is nourished with the textual content of the website, but it cannot live on its own for very long. It will need to connect with and become a part of the larger organism. The surgical team (web developers, SEO, owners, management, and etcetera) will need to work diligently if the donor organ is to be accepted to live and grow as a healthy addition to that larger organism.

Like any organ transplant, if the organ is not well-matched, it will not grow, and it will be rejected. To improve its odds of acceptance, the website medical staff needs to introduce antibodies to the larger Internet organism, and connect the nerves (the people) carefully. Think of the antibodies as the useful things the website has to offer, and the nerves as the people. The delivery method is social media and appropriate business networking with existing parts of the larger organism. You know, instead of hypodermic needles and pills.

The useful “antibodies” help to keep the nerves (the people), and other defenses of the large creature soothed, and even bring it to embrace the new donor organ (website). It is critically important that the surgical team connects the right nerves in the right places in order to make it a healthy transplant.

Why the Organ Transplant Analogy?

This concept came to mind as a prospective client asked me to help her launch a new surgical center website and social media campaign. She did not seem to grasp all that really goes into developing a successful online presence, just as I don’t fully understand how to perform surgery. She mostly just wanted to believe that a good website with a little search engine optimization fairy dust and social media chattiness was all it took. That is kind of like if I assumed surgery just takes some sharp knives and clean towels.

Things such as targeted marketing using customer modeling based on demographics, psychographics, and propensity analysis held no importance to her. She didn’t understand or want to accept those concepts in the beginning, just as I don’t understand why they can’t easily replace my blackened smoky lungs with a new pair.

While visiting with her, I decided that I needed an analogy, so I used the example of the online marketing work I do for myself. That is easy, because I never have to worry about treading on a client’s non-disclosure agreement (and most of my clients require them). It also shows that I have faith in what I was telling her … after all, I performed the same surgery on myself.

So, I explained that there are over 157,000 links pointing to my blog articles, according to Google Webmaster Tools, and that indicates a healthy transplant.

They each add up to connect my blog to the rest of the Internet organism. They are like the nerves and the blood vessels that have adopted my blog as a part of the larger organ which is the Internet. Now my blog helps to nourish the larger organ, and the Internet nourishes my blog as an accepted donor organ.

Then she was concerned about how much it would cost to do it the right way, but without any apparent concern about the cost of doing it the wrong way. Of course, everybody wants to know the cost, but as I’ve explained before, simply asking “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is the wrong question … for many reasons.

The cost of good marketing is kind of like paying taxes. If somebody asks me about taxes, I will tell them I’d prefer to pay a billion per year in taxes, because that means I earned a lot more than that! Similarly, if you spend a lot of money on marketing … the right marketing … it pays you many times whatever you pay for it.

She eventually steered away from her cost concerns, and she began to recognize that she was doing this to increase profit … and not to waste profit. Then she was concerned about how long it would take. Of course, we all want things fast … especially when it comes to money. The more important and seemingly obvious consideration is not only in how long it takes, but whether you implement the skill, the time, and the effort to make it possible at all. If you are doing it well, the time frame is shortened accordingly.

The conversation was very familiar. She was terrified of making good business decisions. I don’t blame her for that. It is a challenging process, and the world of online marketing has tried to overlook good business principles of “pay now, play later“.

Do Surgeons Have All the Answers?

I told her that I could create the tissue in my lab, surgically implant the tissue into the Internet body, help her with the antibodies, and nourish its growth. Then, in her wisdom, she decided that she just wanted me to create the tissue, but that she would handle the surgery and the after-surgery care.

This was because she thought it would save her some money. Yes, the surgeon decided to be a marketer … or to assign it to somebody she could pay the least possible amount of money to. The truth that she does not want to face is that she would be wiser to create a novice website but hire a great surgeon. The even more astonishing truth is that she would be a lot better to count on professionals to carry out the surgery from beginning to end, just the way her patients do.

Can you believe that even somebody so intelligent as a skilled surgeon does not understand the much higher value in allowing the professionals to do the work they are trained to do? Seriously, when people are so absurd to believe that they should add another profession to their resume to save a few bucks, just imagine the dollars they leave behind with their even more expensive and time consuming trial and error learning.

I have written my ideas on this topic, but it still leaves me to wonder why everybody wants to become an SEO and social media expert.

In summary: The next time you, or a loved one goes into surgery, be sure to ask the doctor if she does her own marketing. If so, she is probably not the smartest surgeon.

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Sutures: Another Reason I Love and Hate Marketing

You may say that marketing is not worth the time, effort, and monetary investment that others claim. Maybe it really isn’t what separates companies within an industry. It could just be luck which drives a company beyond their competitors’ boundaries and makes them successful in business. Maybe it is an awesome product at amazingly low cost supplied by a company that is willing to work hard while going broke. Yes, perhaps that is the real secret to success, and maybe the moon landing was a hoax, too.

The reasons for apprehension about marketing could be any of a squillion things which you can rationalize in your own mind, or it could simply be that you are scared to bankruptcy by the thought of putting a lot of money and hope into something you have pre-qualified as “doomed to fail”. Now, would you like to know why most marketing is doomed to fail, or would you rather just read another blog, buy another book, listen to another lecture, and follow what every other failed company that ever walked in your shoes did wrong?

I like to imagine that most companies would prefer to learn things without hastening failure, but I have been shocked before. In fact, I am shocked very often by things I learn while interviewing a prospective new client. Something I find most shocking is when smart people think that marketing is a matter of implementation, while strategy and planning go out the window. I hope you will have a little fun with this example I am about to spell out, because I will.

Oh No! Another Suture Hopeful

Sutures are those things that many people refer to as “stitches”. You know, like the kind you get when you bump your head and lose all of your logic.

I received an email message from the delighted VP of a surgical supply manufacturer a few weeks ago. He read and laughed his way to the bank about a story I wrote to exemplify an online marketing failure. He had every reason to love the story, because it was one of my best wrist-slaps of 2010 to a company that, in layman’s terms, “screwed the pooch”. You can say that it was an edgy move, but when this VP’s rival stiffed their marketing guy, they became an interesting study in just how bad a company can be represented online. I don’t go picking on companies indiscriminately, but I do carry a pretty big sword to wield against aggressors. In fact, this example has provided much amusement and joy to a whole lot of people in my industry.

The company who received my defensive wrist-slap was Suture Express. If you wonder why this rival surgical supply VP was delighted by my work, just perform a search on Google for Suture Express and read the first couple pages of results to find out how much love I gave them. They wanted search engine optimization, and they got it. In fact, they got enough search engine ranking that even the rival VP found me using a search for his own company name.

If Google deserves to be a verb to describe searching something online, then Suture Express has perhaps earned their place as a verb to describe companies who sabotage their online marketing hopes.

Anyway, this is not about Suture Express’ lies, or Suture Express CFO, Brian Forsythe. It is about having the guts to pull the trigger, and to understand that marketing is a huge factor in making or breaking a company.

I spoke with the amused surgical supply VP, and he was a joy to meet. He told me that he had a great laugh from my work, and that he could clearly see I know my career well. He also had a job for me to do.

The surgical supply manufacturer VP gave my name to one of his clients who wants to grow his online suture supply company and be more visible to people who buy sutures online. Since I rank right up there when people search for things like “order sutures online”, it seems pretty certain that I can help his client.

I received a call today, from the VP’s eager referral, and I was smacked with a snowball once again. Since I felt that the referral was pretty qualified, I spent some time on the phone with him. I liked him, too. I learned that he has five salaried field reps beating the streets and hitting the surgical centers and doctor’s offices, with some pretty impressive sales results at roughly a 40 percent closing ratio. It starts to sound like this guy has something that can be sold. He has technical studies to back up his products, and he is pretty enthusiastic about reaching the online market with it.

Slam on the brakes! He doesn’t have any goals, any budget, or anything more than a few basic statements to reflect why he even picked up the phone. He wants more people to know about his company, he wants more of them to come to his website, and he wants them to buy his products. It is simple, right? He lays all of his business hopes at the feet of a marketer, as so many people do, but he also wants it cheap. He would love to slide by paying a marketing guy less than he pays a sales rep, even when the rep has no sales. Yet, he wants to enjoy the branding and ongoing collateral that a marketing guy brings. That is pretty brilliant, except that it doesn’t jive. He wants what everybody else does, which is “the most bang for the buck”. Oh yes, but nix the buck part.

What I think he failed to realize, right off the bat, is that he is in a business that will go head to head with Suture Express. He knows the article I wrote explaining how his competitor spent $150,000 on a website and online marketing approach, and then called me to come and fix their mistakes. The article also explained that I turned down a lot of money to delete my story and sweep it under the rug.

With this information in-hand, he sent me the proposal his researcher gave him as the best alternative for their new online shopping cart, which was priced at $2,000. Are you kidding me?! Do people really hope to go to battle against a company who can buy and sell them with a bad day’s revenue, and do it without a real-life budget, or a plan? Worse yet, do they hope to do it with a plan that is comprised of nothing more than soliciting a marketing provider’s “off the cuff” proposal?

There is a lesson in this tale. If you don’t have a grasp on your market potential, don’t have quantifiable and achievable goals, and don’t have a solid and merit-based budget reflecting those goals, you need to pay somebody to do that research for you. Successful marketing does not come from shooting into the dark without a strategy. It is not the action of implementing ill-prepared tactics that a marketer suggests. Success requires research that experienced marketers are prepared to offer, but if you don’t have any of the basic groundwork, we get paid for that, too.

If you think that asking for a marketing proposal is how you will get the best research, think again. I can whip out a boilerplate marketing proposal that will keep you reading for hours, but it is not going to be anything more than a big number on a page if you are trying to get somewhere with your carriage pulling your horse.

I find that too many people think of marketing as simply an implementation of generic processes. If that is how you look at marketing, you may want to look again. You can search the Internet to buy sutures online, order sutures online, and an extensive list of other fancy search keywords like suture company, suture supply company, suture companies. You will find me very easily that way, and I don’t sell a single suture. To do that, it would take more than just a listing at the top of search engines and a lot of people talking about it.

Now, I ask you, does it look like I am writing a marketing proposal tonight? Oh, I guess you could call it that, but my proposal is this “Get serious, or go broke!”

That’s my rant for the day. What’s yours?

Photo Credit to SuperFantastic via Flickr

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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.

Ethicon Sutures: Endo Surgical Sutures

Ethicon sutures are widely used sutures in surgical procedures ranging from an episiotomy to orthopaedic surgery. Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has been the world leader in the manufacture of surgical sutures and wound closures since before World War II, and has since increased in market share to over 80% in the USA. Ethicon’s famously popular Prolene nonabsorbable polypropylene sutures, Monocryl absorbable sutures, and Vicryl (polyglactin 910) absorbable braided sutures have propelled Ethicon to lead the surgical suture market in a fashion not unlike Google’s capture of the search engine market.

Ethicon and SEO?

For most of us, Ethicon braided synthetic absorbable sutures are certainly not in the top 100 things we think to search for when we visit Google, but the term posed an important question in a recent conference call I had with a surgical supply company.

Ethicon Sutures: Surgical Supply SEO Study

While meeting with the team of executives from a leading endo surgical supply company specializing in sutures and wound closure supplies to hospitals and surgical centers, my prospective client brought up a concern of being at the top of search engine results for the search term “sutures”. In fact, one of the company leaders indicated a strong opinion that the only useful term for the company to focus on with their SEO campaign was simply “sutures”, and that other lateral keywords would not be valuable to their company. He made the analogy of an automotive supply company who only sold tires, and that if they only sold tires, the term “tires” would be the only value to the company. My response to this was to ask if this hypothetical tire company sold truck tires, tractor tires, z rated tires, h rated tires, Bridgestone tires, light truck tires, SUV tires, valve stems, tire rotation, or whether the company could potentially benefit from having tire care tips on their Website to provide useful information or warranty information to their customers.

As a clear leader in his industry, I give this gentleman much credit as the top of his field, and a genuine American success story. If you need sutures, this is the man to know. If you need SEO services, he is still working on it, and with my help, he will hopefully be a great resource in the subject matter as well. I certainly would never mean to offend this gentleman, but I tried to present these points in very matter-of-fact terms. I wish I was better at sugar-coating the facts, but my job as a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant and practitioner, is largely that of research and mathematics. There is not always an easy way to tell others that their estimation of their potential industry reach is not as they expected. This is especially true of those who have enjoyed great success as the leader in their field.

Sutures vs. Ethicon Vicryl Sutures

Our discussions led us to the topic of one word searches versus two and three keyword phrases. I tried to suggest that a wide range of industry related keyword phrases such as Ethicon sutures, Ethicon Vicryl sutures, polyglactin 910 braided sutures, and others would produce far more results and be more targeted to his desired audience. My explanation was that estimates show roughly only 10% of searches are for a single word, whereas two and three word phrases comprise well over half of keyword searches. The actual numbers are a moving target, and may vary slightly by industry, but suffice it to say that single keyword searches like “sutures” are statistically insignificant in terms of actually reaching their target market. These single keyword searches may make nice bragging points, but in actual use and in conversion rates, they are not very useful. An example of this I have found is that in a Google blog search, I have often found this very blog in the number one position for the search keyword “SEO”. Just as the term “SEO” will mostly attract other SEO companies checking out their competition, the keyword “sutures” produces many results for consumers while this client needs to reach hospital administrators. The lesson here is that if your keyword phrases of choice do not reach the desired audience, they are useless.

In Google search results, single word searches, especially the competitive ones, are very commonly accompanied by a selection of suggestions to refine the search. Google does not make a lot of mistakes, and these are included because the more refined searches are better suited to the search engine users’ needs and expectations. Most users will define their search without prompting, but in cases where the user does not, search engines will often provide a prompting to help the user on their way.

Buy Ethicon Sutures Online

When you seek to buy sutures online, it is my research experience backed with statistical data that tells me you will be vastly more likely to search for a more specific phrase reflecting the type of sutures you need, and perhaps even referencing the type of surgical procedure you intend to perform. A simple test of this fact is that by searching Google for sutures, you will find mixed results including how to tie a suture knot, caring for sutures, facial sutures, and many things unrelated to your need to buy sutures or seek the best suture option for your surgical needs. This brings me to a point I have made many times before that if you select effective keywords and use a lateral keyword approach, it will provide for a much greater return on investment and SEO value.