reputation management Archives - Page 3 of 4 by Mark Murnahan

Fisker Automotive’s “Fisker Karma” vs. “Social Media Karma”

Fisker Automotive is a startup automobile manufacturer based in Irvine, California that holds some pretty valuable cards in the future of “green” car technology. Like any startup, how they play those cards will close the gap on their potential to become a Ford or a Flop. First, I want to tell you how amazing the product is, and then I will share some reasons you may or may not see this 100 MPG powerhouse in a driveway near you. I will also offer some solutions. This should be a lesson to any company.

Fisker has developed an extended range electric hybrid car that I would describe as being so sexy it makes me want to take my shirt off and rub the Karma all over my body. I do not apologize if that gives you an awkward visual, because their Fisker Karma holds many of the same elements which car lovers, like myself, look for in a proper mate. It has amazing curves, it is strong at over 400 horsepower and astonishing torque, plus it looks fast standing still. I suspect that it even smells like a new car, and we all know how sexy that is, right?

Fisker Karma: The Car You Never Let Your Daughter Borrow

The Karma shares signature design elements with distant cousins Aston Martin DB9 and BMW Z8 Roadster; cars which were also designed by CEO, Henrik Fisker. Fisker may be an unfamiliar name to you, but he has a pedigree in automotive design, and has made some bold statements since his liberating personal venture into Fisker Coachbuild.

An added attraction which bolsters Fisker Karma’s market potential is that it treads lightly on our planet. In common short distance day-to-day use, the Karma is a plug-in electric car. Any true car-lover knows that electric cars have full-tilt torque-on-demand to plant you firmly into the seat in an instant. The torque, which is what makes car enthusiasts’ heart race, is mind-blowing. Don’t fret if the batteries fade, because it will automatically kick into gasoline-augmented “Sport” mode with enough power to whack your skull back into the headrest far better than your average hot rod. Bonus points come to play while the Fisker Karma can do this and still achieve 100 miles per gallon, and 300 miles between energy stops.

Fisker is Easy to Hate

The automotive industry is an easy target which many people love to hate. We love the freedom our cars give us, while we hate things like breakdowns, smog, and car makers who get bailed out while other economy-drivers eat beans and try to keep their companies afloat. Anybody who ever met a stereotypical car salesman has likely forged a few dire opinions about the automotive industry.

Karma: “the concept of “action” or “deed”, understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect”
Source: Wikipedia

Some companies are easier to beat up than others. It is often not because they are doing something wrong, but because they are not projecting enough that is right. With too little positive representation, a negative portrayal is much easier for critics to propagate. In the case of Fisker Karma, the automotive rumor shylocks have come to collect their pound of flesh.

Fisker Automotive has received a significant share of negative public attention for a company able to produce over $300 million in private capital followed by a U.S. Department of Energy loan for an additional $528.7 million (REF: US DOE Announcement).

Matters such as production delays, pricing increases, and gouges aimed at corporate officers are readily available, and even prevalent in their online media mix. I am not sure I would call it overly punishing just yet, but I consider it enough that people with the high stakes of founders Henrik Fisker and Bernhard Koehler, are wise to carefully monitor and attempt to adjust the brand image. I would also consider it punishing enough to speculate that large investors in founding partner Quantum Technologies (NASDAQ “QTWW”) have cause for any spoken and unspoken concerns.

It is not uncommon for a startup automobile manufacturer to have critics, but it is disappointing that the company does not appear as a significant participant in their publicity, positive or negative, thus far.

Thinking Points for Fisker Automotive Executives

I would like to offer a short list of solutions for the company. I also want to point out that these can be modified and applied to most other companies, as well.

Monitor: Monitor the Fisker Automotive brand. Act upon the horrid speculation and testimonies of others, using consumer-centric answers, instead of continued passive acceptance.
Qualify: Qualify benefits of issues such as price increases and production delays. There are clearly defined reasons, and they are not all embarrassing ones. The embarrassing reasons are the speculative excuses which people make up about Fisker.
Create: Create a respectable blog, for the sake of all things logical and measurable. Have a hub for the Fisker Automotive brand’s voice.
Strategize: Use Fisker’s massive technology, financial, and human assets to forge a strategy. “Sell more cars” or “Increase industry alliances abroad” are not strategies. Those are goals and tactics, but competing with Tesla’s Master Plan will require strategy.
Participate: Notice and participate in positive publicity. I have read a lot of good news about Fisker, too. In fact, I recently submitted a story to Digg.com about Fisker’s agreement with China Grand Automotive Group and watched over 40 Digg votes stack up within just a couple hours. In each of the news stories and online conversations I have read, I never witness any company participation to answer questions, but I have often seen the comments turn sour. In several cases, there is a correlation between that lack of participation and the souring of opinions.
Delegate: Be diligent in reviewing my qualifications and my drive to assist the company. My résumé is only a click away, and likely a great investment for Fisker Automotive.

I hope to see Fisker do well, and I am pulling for them. In fact, there is only a small list of companies flying this low on my RADAR for which I initiate prompts to review my résumé. Fisker Automotive is a company that I find a strong desire to work with, because I see their enormous potential, as well as their missing pieces.

The first step is to find out if Fisker is listening, and if so, whether they recognize a need to address their current and upcoming challenges of public opinions and brand marketing.

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Auto Racing Legend Says “Prove It!”

One of the greatest marketing one-liners in my recent recollection is “Prove it!”, and it came directly from a legend in the automotive racing industry. I think it can apply to nearly any company, in any industry. As a race enthusiast and driver, myself, I found a special attachment to this phrase. In racing, winning is not subjective, and you either “prove it”, or you lose the race. I will share the story with you, and hope to encourage you to do more than just make claims, but to actually prove it!

If you are an automotive enthusiast, you probably know the name, Brock Yates. Just in case you don’t have octane in your coffee and motor oil running through your veins, I will give you a quick background on this iconic man.

From Wikipedia:

“Brock Yates is an American journalist and author. He was longtime executive editor of Car and Driver, an American automotive magazine.”
… “currently serves as a commentator on racing and vintage cars for the Speed Channel”
… “wrote Smokey and the Bandit II (1980). Yates also wrote the screenplay for The Cannonball Run (1981) film”

Best of all, there are two Brocks! Brock Yates Jr. continued his father’s profound love of performance automobiles and racing, and became the next generation of legendary Yates gearheads. “Brockr”, as many know him, is the next generation of Yates to pour gasoline on the 27 year old tradition of “Cannonball Run”, now commonly referred to as “Cannonball One Lap of America“. Cannonball is no longer the cross-country race from coast-to-coast across America as it was portrayed (with relative accuracy) in the Cannonball Run movie. Cannonball Run is a fact of the rebellious auto racing past, but the event continues to thrive in its modern, and law-abiding, iteration of today. It is now a National Auto Sport Association (NASA) sanctioned event, with a strong following of sports car racing enthusiasts.

The Cannonball One Lap of America over the past couple decades is an annual event taking race teams from one race track to the next, crossing the United States to compete and prove their racing skill and endurance with sixteen events in just eight days. Short-named “One Lap” is where automotive manufacturers, and companies of all kinds, send their best amateur and professional racers from all around the world to compete and to “Prove it!”

When Brock Yates Said “Prove It!”

I called “Brockr” a few nights ago to see how the Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show in Orlando went, and to further strategize my efforts to move deeper into the automotive industry, myself. We never seem to spend less than a couple hours on the phone, and I am not sure which of us is to blame, but we have great conversations, and I am delighted to call Brock a good friend.

Before Brock finally had to run and put his daughter to bed, he said “Oh, Mark, I have just one more quick story to tell …” He told that while he was at PRI, he approached several performance tuning companies with cars on display. He walked up to each of them and asked, “Is it fast?” Of course they answered “Yes! Very fast!” He then asked, “Is it durable?” Many automotive performance tuners will lie about this one, so Brock’s very appropriate answer to each of them was “Prove it” … and bring it to One Lap of America.

It is a message that I have given to companies at least a squillion times. If you have something better than the rest, and something that people should consider spending their hard-earned money to buy, you should prove it!

“Prove It” at Brock Yates’ Cannonball One Lap of America

I don’t hand out a lot of free “plugs”, but I can qualify this one. I have competed in Brock Yates’ Cannonball One Lap of America twice, in 2007 and 2008. Those were some of the most challenging days of my life, but days that I hope to repeat over and over again in future years, including the coming 3500 mile 2011 event.

The event comes early each May, and it is an amazing opportunity to see what you are made of. It also provides many excellent marketing opportunities, with multiple sponsorship levels to choose from. The marketing potential is especially strong if you take the initiative to publicize your participation well, and broadcast the whole eight days live on the Internet the way I did in 2008. Just imagine how many people would talk about that across social media, and all the new incoming links your website could have. There are a lot of imitators, but this is an event which really shows what a car enthusiast is made of, and it combines two of my favorite things … racing and marketing.

Here is an entertaining video of Motor Trend’s coverage of the event in 2010. It tells a great story of just how hard some people will work to prove what they can do.

John Heinricy Makes an Ideal One Lap Co-Driver!

As a side note to the story, and with a wink and a nudge, I offer a “brilliant” idea. I think that the uber-automotive-icon, John Heinricy, could make a mighty loud statement for Torvec, Inc. or the Hennessey Venom GT by pairing with me for a well-publicized live webcast of the event. Even better, he and Torvec’s CEO, Richard Kaplan, could appoint me as Torvec’s Marketing Director and implement high-torque strategies to demonstrate Torvec’s great potential.

Now back to the original thought. When you consider your business, I think you should always address this one very important question: How will you “prove it”?

Photo Courtesy of Steve Rossini’s Highland Design Studio

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New SEO Acronym to Replace SEO by 2012?

Have you ever been in a conversation and somebody used an acronym that you did not recognize? You just kind of keep it there in your head for a moment and hope they say something that will clue you in on just what the heck they were talking about when they uttered that string of letters. Then, if you cannot figure it out, you may whip out your phone and google it while nonchalantly acting like you were checking an important message. I will offer up a new acronym for skilled Internet marketers that will be more memorable and better reflect the work we do. First, I would like to explain why I think the “SEO” acronym should be laid to rest.

Exactly what is “SEO” and why in the name of all things sensible do we still use this acronym? SEO can stand for either search engine optimization (the services) or search engine optimizer (the person), but it actually encompasses a much broader spectrum of Internet marketing services and technologies. It has morphed dramatically over the years, as marketers’ understanding and use of the Internet has changed, and as many greenhorn SEO came to flood the market. The use of “SEO” became popular enough that I suppose it sounded better to a lot of people than the term “Internet Marketer” or “Profit Engineer” and so instead of SEO being considered a sub-category of Internet marketing skills, it is often used to represent the whole of Internet marketing. It became more of a meme than an actual skill set, and due to saturation of its use, the real meaning has been muted and bastardized.

The fact is that in order to be a search engine optimizer, it requires skills and tools from all disciplines of Internet marketing, including social media, reputation management, market research, data analysis, creative marketing, programming, website structure, web servers, and much more.

It seems to me that the SEO acronym has gone the way of the word “Webmaster”. Back in the early days, to be a Webmaster meant that you had a thorough understanding of everything from software, hardware, network infrastructure, website design, programming, security, and more. It meant that the person had a mastery-level understanding of the Web. It was an actual job title that held a meaning. Then, all of the sudden anybody with a keyboard and a mouse was using the popular Microsoft FrontPage to build a website and they were calling themselves a Webmaster. I was a Webmaster before that revolution, and it gave me a little taste of puke in my mouth when I saw that I could have become a Webmaster a whole lot faster if I just claimed it instead of actually reading and studying all those countless hours to become one.

I suppose if you want to call yourself something and you get a few people to believe it, you can be just about anything. I think I will call myself a “Profit Engineer and Competition Killer with Extraordinary Resources”. PECKER. As for the act of providing PECKER, that would be “Profit Engineering and Competition Killing with Extraordinary Resource” I think it rolls off the tongue nicely, and its meaning is better defined and understood than “SEO”. Besides, it was one of only a couple acronyms I could find that were not already taken.

Coming soon, “SHAFT” … be sure to subscribe!

Malabar Grey Hornbill photo courtesy of Rathika Ramasamy
via Wikipedia

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Hiring SEO Tip: The Wizard Mutual Fund Management Cannot Bullshit Me!

I just got off the phone with a guy who purportedly spent over a million dollars developing his quasi-e*trade competitor service that will supposedly bring the whole world of finance back into check and fix the struggles of anybody afraid to lose their money in a mutual fund or other stock market failure. Before I get too far, I want to make it very clear that I do not earn my living writing this blog. People find me here, but it is absolutely not how I earn money. I earn money when somebody comes to me to make their business successful and can push their marketing go button. When they come to me to feed me more crap, I feed it right back to them. Sometimes I feel compelled to tell my readers about it. I often do that with a scorching opinion of mediocrity.

The Wizard guy called me a couple days ago after finding me online. Yes, he found me in a search and I was not seeking him. I don’t seek people, and I don’t do fluffy sales pitches and free market research. I am the SEO (search engine optimizer) after all, and my job is for people to find me, but mostly to help people find my clients. I answer questions and I help people to understand what I do, but I would rather choke them than explain the importance of being visible in search engines with a magnificent marketing message … or that I know how to do it. Seriously, if you find me, don’t ask me if I can help people find you. That is clearly grounds for choking. People discover me many times per hour, and some of them think they understand the whole idea of what I provide, but most of them have it all wrong. I mean, sometimes they get it extremely wrong!

I am not here to sell you stuff or to take your money. Do not ask me for a price tag for a subjective interpretation of success, because I will only tell you that if you want “success”, you better bring your lunch money and expect me to hang you up by your ankles to shake the coins from your pockets. You are not going to get success for free. I already have a wife, and she is the only person who can rip my shirt off and get my talent for free. Success does not come with a set price, and it is not defined the same for you as it is for that other person over there. That is why, if you want success, my standard price begins at 438 squillion dollars. Now just how much success do you want to buy?

I am here to improve my clients’ profits by improving their marketing message and its reach. That is what I am paid to do. I do not care who you are or how much you can pay me … or try to impress me with, because you cannot buy my reputation or integrity. Not at all, and I have foregone millions of dollars in the past to prove that money cannot buy my integrity. Don’t even make a bid, because it is not going to happen.

The Wizard Impressed Me … At First

The Wizard guy gave me a great demonstration of his service and I was impressed. In fact, I was impressed enough to ring “The Wizard” on the phone tonight as a follow-up call to our previous conversation. He was beaming with delight at the prospect of my interest in marketing his service, and we shared some great ideas about what his marketing plan should entail.

The Wizard guy has the brilliance to suggest that his service may be best served as a pyramid scheme. Sure, it could go that way (in a bad movie), but I told him that if he made that decision without the foresight of market research that it could kill a lot of other possibilities he had also hoped for, including potential for selling the company. He had mixed ideas on how to market his service, and I told him that what would benefit him the most before his product launch is some solid market research. He liked that, but thought that should be free. He had the impression that properly extensive market research was something we would just provide free of charge and then send him a proposal for the implementation. It is too common for people to think that marketing is just about the implementation and that the research is just pulled out of our undershorts. It is not that way, and good research with solid projections does not come free … for me, you, The Wizard, or anybody else.

In my opinion, this guy expressed no better clue about marketing the product than an arrogant idea of who should buy “The Wizard” and why the whole stock market and mutual fund industry should believe in him and his flashy but convincing Wizard service. He only explained who he was and who he thought he should sell it to. He seemed to know or care little about who it would actually benefit the most, how to reach them, or the proper message they would respond to. Market research to him seemed to mean I would go and gather all of the magic bullets and put them into a canned proposal, and that to pay me meant I would send him a loaded gun to shoot at his target.

There is a whole lot more potential for The Wizard than he seemed to grasp, but it was only after I gave him a big enough dose of my marketing experience in a “reality pill” that he finally said “this is sounding kind of expensive.” What completely failed to sink in was that in order to bring a product to a position of massive market success in an industry already clouded with distrust and crooks is that you cannot do it with a tin cup full of pencils and a pair of dark glasses begging for nickels on a street corner. When you create a self-proclaimed brilliant product and have the audacity to call it “The Wizard” and brand it as some sort of financial savior, you better be ready to market it and prove that you have more than a mythical profit-solving stock market idea. Marketing takes research, and that means more than a kid next door saying “we can put it on Craig’s List.”

The Wizard Mutual Fund Management Tool Wants Contingency SEO

If you ever happen to Google the term “contingency SEO” I am what you get. Yes, numero uno … I am the guy. I love working for pay based on my performance. That is where I make money, and that is all great. I just hate it when people think that it means they have no cost involved and that I trust them just because … well, just because they called me on the telephone to pitch me their line like a squillion other cheapskates. For my candid take on this, take some time and see the video of Wimpy from Popeye here (if you are reading by RSS, see video on the original blog post).

If you want to know how contingency SEO works, read about it. It does not mean free marketing. It means partnering up with your marketing people and working together for more profit. I know that may get confusing for some people, but the reality is that you cannot shit on your best asset and expect the best results. No … that is not how this works. That kind of illusion only happens in fairy tales and movies … like The Wizard of OZ.

Peeking Inside The Wizard’s Mind (My Speculation)

OK, I get it … if I create a market for this unknown service called “The Wizard” and give my gracious SEO talent and market research on contingency, the wizard will gladly pay me on Tuesday, like that jackass Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons who always owed people for last Tuesday’s burger. Sorry, but no dice. When I market something, I bring more than my good looks and a pocket of arcade tokens. I use my industry reputation, and I use a long list of marketing resources and talents which are not free. I put a lot of money and work into the launch of a product which can cost dearly if I start launching marketing plans like “The Wizard” only to piss off all of my business relations when some Wizard guy does not pay the bill and I am on the hook to pay the people I brought in to help market it with me.

The Wizard Stock Market Service Has No Stock

Before I jump into bed with a client for a contingency SEO contract, they had better be ready to put some skin in the game. I mean, if this guy has a million dollars wrapped up in development of a service, how can he seemingly care so little to recoup the cost and bring it to market the right way. How much can you trust the wizard who did not seem to understand that creating a solution is only a tiny part of a business? What kind of financial wizard is that?

Do you want to do business, or do you want to feed bullshit to somebody choking on a mouth full of bullshit?

Success and earning trust from consumers should require that you can do what you say you can do. You have to be a business person and that means more than having a great idea. You must have money … yes … m-o-n-e-y, because although it may look easy, what I do requires people … full-time people with kids to feed and bills to pay. Without money, it is hard to promote some scheme that deals with people’s finances and retirement futures. I am not about to become another Bernie Madoff jerk by promoting some plan to solve the world’s mutual fund and stock market troubles. No … not for free, and not if I view you as a bad businessman or somebody summing me up as a sucker.

I may be an asshole, but I am not an asshole that you can scam, or pay enough to scam others.

Do Not Act Like The Wizard

If you have a product to bring to market, do not act like The Wizard. Are you seriously so delusional that you think product development is where an idea will make money? No … the money comes after you bring it to market, and sometimes not even then.

If you come to find a need for serious marketing and you reach out to a serious marketing person … I mean one with some marketing talent, don’t come to us with an attitude that we are here to sell you something. If the marketer is good, and if it is any search engine optimizer with a little experience, he or she hears from people like you all day, every day. We get sick of it, and it forces our gag reflex into overdrive. Then we end up waving a bullshit flag all over you and may turn you into the next Suture Express. Go Google to see what happens with companies like Suture Express when they irritate the SEO by not paying. Don’t take my word for it … go and ask Google!

If you want the best marketing, it is better to treat it as if you are going to the bank seeking a loan. You want what we have to offer (money), that means you need to give us a reason to approve you. This is especially true if you are seeking contingency / performance-based SEO. I am not your momma, and I have no obligation to feed you. Let’s get that straight right now. I have three words for cheapskates wanting a free lunch and those are “rub a lamp”.

If you think I make my money here … writing this blog, you really got it all wrong. I make money when non-bullshitters reach up under their sack and bring something to the table that I can market for them. Hitting me up for a bunch of free ideas and then insulting me is a good way to get said sack on an Internet chopping block.

So there is my rant. Do you want to do business, or do you want to feed bullshit to somebody choking on a mouth full of bullshit?

That is my opinion. Take it or leave it, but don’t act like you didn’t see it.

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99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!

I have heard percentages of marketing efforts that do not work. I have witnessed those statistics enough to reach the top of my throat, and to declare that most marketing is little more than miserable failure, like the last squeak of a mouse in a trap. In fact, if you held my job for a day or two, you could even taste it like bad acid reflux. It is really true though, that most marketing falls on deaf ears, and the masses are immune to it. This is largely because these days, anybody with a computer and an Internet connection can bill themselves as an expert marketer. The barrier of entry no longer requires aptitude, experience, or even desire for anything other than somebody else’s money.

The odds of a marketer to recognize the root of our field as helping others with respect, dignity, and a desire to serve them has diminished to a point that skepticism is allowed to take over as a prevalent factor. This means that trust … hard-earned and well-deserved trust is due for a resurgence. A recall to the very root of the word “sell” is what it takes to be really great in a marketplace. If you have not learned this from your marketing pedigree just yet, the word “sell”, in this context, owes its origin to the Norwegian word “selje”. The literal translation is “to serve”, and that still means a lot to some of us.

The job of a professional marketer is to figure out that tiny fraction which does work. What we do is to serve our clients in a way which reflects our desire to benefit more than only ourselves, and to serve others at our highest capabilities. It means that a great marketer must look beyond the benefit of a few bucks today and understand the greater benefit of tomorrow.

A Happy Marketing Success Story

As the economy spooks many companies into bankruptcy and executive fears of failed marketing reach the brim of my digestive system and invoke my gag reflex, I want to tell you a success story. Yes, amongst all of the corporate scaremongering and enterprise torment, there really is success in the mix. This story is a real one, and if it is what I believe it is, it exemplifies success in the hardest market ever, which is to find personal and professional satisfaction.

Join with me and jump on board with my excitement for a moment. Raise your hands and start cheering while I share an exciting story of enterprise SEO success.

There is a company, a tried and true success in their marketplace, who picked up the mouse and found me. They searched for what I do, they took time to read a small share of my facts, figures, and persona, and we met by voice over the telephone. The story has more detail, which I will share as it unfolds, but for the moment, I offer you a piece of my expectedly upfront social media transparency.

The caller on the other end of the phone was a bright and cheery executive who revamped much of the delight that I have held so dearly as my ideal marketplace. This was not an intern at the local veterinary clinic asking how they could get a few more sick dogs to treat. It was not even an auto dealer seeking answers to social media marketing. It was a fellow gearhead executive calling on behalf of a gearhead company. He spoke my language, and we held discussions of real marketing beyond just the couple clicks up the roller coaster track that most companies will attempt before they take the chicken exit and get off the ride while the cars roll back into the loading area.

This guy was speaking my kind of language. You know, the language of waking up and smelling gear oil, coffee, and yesterday’s sweat. The kind of stuff that would intimidate Clint Eastwood and force Chuck Norris to turn in his “Man Card” and scream “Uncle” like a crybaby-sissy-bed-wetter. Yes, it was as if the Chairman of Manhood and the CEO of Testosterone were in stereo driving an epic bass line directly into my entrepreneurial earphones.

When I tell you this guy is right up my alley, I only claim that because I actually pictured him taking down six Chicago street thugs with nothing but a toothpick and a rubber band … yep, in an alley … my alley. Indeed, this dude instilled just enough of a masculine man-crush that when I told the story to my wife, she actually recounted it, in jest, with a boy-meets-girl kind of scenario and somebody was about to lean in for the first kiss. She didn’t get to the part where they sweat on each other, but probably just because that made her a bit weak in the knees. The fog of testosterone floating around would be enough to stop most hearts dead in their tracks.

In our encounter, it was as if I was driving Eleanor from the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds” and … well, like we were both driving Eleanor (e.g. Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction LOT: 1287). All but one detail, he actually has yet come to liberate my Eleanor-plus sized budget from the company’s board of directors. He will be working on them this week, and I will assist him in that jailbreak all I can. It will be important that my new gearhead friends understand that there is a vast difference between Lot 1287 and the dozens of other nice 1967 Mustangs in the list, and the difference is not all about the price … it is value which matters.

While we visited, I discovered the most awkward scenario. The company has me pictured as an in-house corporate SEO guy. At first, I felt a little tear on my cheek, because I know there are only a relatively few companies who understand the value that a C-level position in my industry can provide for them, or how much a long-standing CEO requires just to keep feeding his family. Then I started remembering how much I hate selling SEO. I mean, after all, you can Google something as simple as “sell SEO” or “how to sell SEO” and find that I know a lot about this business. My best scenario of how to sell SEO is just to be able to do it, prove it, and earn a squillion dollars from it. I already did that. My selling is over, and what I mostly want is to do the work I love, and to never have to slink my way out of a boardroom because some kid with less talent but a better line of garbage talked them into some cheap SEO. Realistically, any boardroom worth the table where they sit should be able to distinguish real marketing talent from a marketing representative waiting for his next diaper change. If they cannot recognize that difference, maybe a quick Google for “marketing talent” will flip the butter and the bread in the right direction and show them where the real deal lives and thrives. Where that butter meets the bread is with the guy holding uncanny skills (marketing and gearhead alike), a history of success, and a knack for telling what people need to hear even if it is not what they want to hear. That is a guy with the company in mind, whether he is working as their independent SEO consultant or as their boardroom fun department ready to whip out his clown nose and reveal his magic bag filled with market share, acquisition targets, increased leverage, stronger investors, retail fanaticism, and other boardroom delights.

In either scenario which my gear-hugging pals over there prefer, my Eleanor+ (performance bonus, equity, and etcetera) price point is a cheap jailbreak to fire up the passion of a real gearhead marketer who can come to the office and bang out high-compression gasoline flavored treats the way I would passionately provide for these guys.

 I doubt they can afford me, but I am just as sure as motor oil and gasoline going to give them every opportunity to try. It really comes down to how their board of directors view the value of the Internet and my impact upon it.

To my new gearhead pals, I have a tip for your use in our synergistic battle in the boardroom. If they want to know how to justify SEO cost, just Google it! They will find the same guy as when you were seeking how to find SEO talent. 😉

NOTE: To my many longstanding and devoted clients, many of which have been with my services for a decade, please be aware that nothing will shake my devotion to you. You will continue to receive the highest attention from my highly capable support representatives, and you can expect the same level of service which you have trusted me with for so long. As you are surely aware, there is no dollar amount which can purchase my integrity.