Prospect Genius Blog: Online advertising information and tips

Josh Murlin, Is That You Again? Skyrise Solutions Attempts to Defraud Prospect Genius Clients

By prospectgenius on January 23, 2012

It has come to our attention that a company called Skyrise Solutions has been calling our clients and leading them to believe that they represent Prospect Genius. We would like to clarify that those individuals, along with Skyrise Solutions as a whole, are NOT associated with Prospect Genius in any way.

You may remember a similar experience that we had with EDriven Concepts back in August 2011. In short, an EDriven Concepts sales representative named Josh Murlin called a number of our clients asking about their Prospect Genius accounts, implying that he was a representative from Prospect Genius without ever revealing his actual identity. In some of these phone calls, Mr. Murlin even tried to convince a handful of our clients to stop payment on checks made out to Prospect Genius and to instead mail these checks to an entirely different address!

Well, it appears that EDriven Concepts, disappointed with his less-than-honest advertising tactics, has parted ways with Mr. Murlin. In response, he and a business partner started another company called Skyrise Solutions, which employs those same dishonest tactics to poach clients from other SEO companies—and this time, EDriven Concepts is a target. Mr. Number, a “social caller ID” service that collects information about phone numbers linked to frequent spam and telemarketing activity, has already seen a few complaints from EDriven Concepts clients regarding Skyrise Solutions. These clients report that a representative from Skyrise Solutions pretended to be their current service provider and, in one case, charged them double what they were promised.

In addition to targeting his former company, Mr. Murlin and his associates at Skyrise Solutions continue their attempt to defraud Prospect Genius clients. As you can hear from the audio clip below, which was taken directly from one of the aforementioned phone calls, the sales approach is the same old song and dance: First, the sales representative tries to confuse the business owner by referencing a “previous” conversation that never actually took place. Then, they continue the present conversation and allow the client to believe that he or she is speaking with Prospect Genius, not Skyrise Solutions. You’ll notice that this particular sales rep mistakenly calls his company “Skyline,” an error that’s suggestive of tactics so dishonest, even the sales reps can’t keep them straight.

Skyrise Fraud Attempt

Given that this phone call took place on one of our metered lines, which are designed to record every single incoming call, Prospect Genius can say with absolute certainty that the purportedly “previous” conversation between Skyrise Solutions and this and other business owners never actually occurred.

If you would like to research Skyrise Solutions even further on your own, here is some contact information that we’ve collected:

Skyrise Solutions (Main)
29970 Technology Dr. STE 118
Murrieta, CA 92563
Tel.: (951) 698-6660

Cody (sales): 951-698-6707 and 951-551-1662

Please be very careful not to give representatives from Skyrise Solutions any sensitive or personal information, as we cannot guarantee its security. If you have any doubts regarding the legitimacy of a phone call, simply hang up, dial our main line (1-800-689-1273), and ask for your account manager.

Wishing you pleasant, honest dealings and continued success,

Prospect Genius

Posted in Blog Posts, Tips and Tricks | Leave a response

Google Maps: Revisted

By prospectgenius on December 12, 2011

This past January, we noted that the number-one way to get your business banned from Google Places (a.k.a. Google Maps) is to “keyword-stuff” your Google Maps listing. That is, instead of correctly listing your business as “Bob’s Services” in Google Places, you list it as “Bob’s Appliance HVAC Plumbing Heating Cooling and AC Services of New York, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens.”

If your business is listed as “Bob’s Services” everywhere else on the Internet except for Google, Google will know your Places name is not legitimate. This results in Google flagging your listing as a suspected spammer and then your listing will have to be reviewed manually by a human. It’s a lengthy process. As a result of this review, your Google Places listing will most likely be penalized severely. The worst-care scenario could mean that your paid ads, organic results, and even your business name could fall under this penalty.

Have More Than One Map Listing? Get a Commercial Suite Instead

It’s simple: If your business doesn’t physically exist in two or more distinct locations, then it shouldn’t have more than one listing on Google Places.

Despite the fact that some spammers are truly dishonest and sneaky, there are legitimate reasons that some people list more than one location. For example, you might think that if you list your actual address, which is in the boondocks, then your downtown customers won’t call because they’ll think you’re too far away. Additionally, you may just want to make it clear that you and your workers are willing to travel all over to provide service to multiple areas. However, no matter how good your intentions, Google rarely makes exceptions.

Google basically puts addresses into two categories: commercial locations, and everything else. According to Google’s ideal world, every business would have a physical building in a commercially zoned area. The reality, however, is much more complicated. For example, many plumbers use their home address as their official business address because they travel from customer to customer, which means they have no need for a storefront.

If this is your situation, moving your business address to a commercial box provided by a packing supply company like the UPS Store or Mailboxes, Etc. is probably the best plan. These companies can provide you with a street address and suite number in an existing location, which gives you the commercial zone that Google expects, while still maintaining a local presence in the region that you service. Keep in mind, though, that you should then make this your official business address and use it exclusively in your online marketing efforts. You risk being flagged as a spammer if you list this commercial address along with your home address.

If you’re thinking, “This isn’t fair,” since you work out of your home and don’t want the hassle of acquiring a UPS box, know that Google probably won’t penalize you if you exclusively use your home address. However, you should note that using a commercial location is generally more effective because Google tends to favor commercial addresses over residential ones.

But I’m Not Trying to Be a Spammer!

According to Google’s guidelines, it’s essential for you have all of your business information match (especially your business name and address) wherever it appears on the Internet. Google may issue a penalty for spamming if it doesn’t match. Sometimes, this even happens to business owners who have no memory of listing their business anywhere else outside of Google Places. This begs the questions, “How did inaccurate information about my business get onto other Web sites in the first place?”

Information posted on one site is often copied, or “harvested,” by automated programs and used to populate other sites. Basically, the Internet is a giant recycling center for information, so even though you haven’t personally listed your business in any directories, it’s very likely your information is out there due to a variety of potential happenings. For example:

If you hired a company to promote your business online, it might have placed your information on a few popular business directories.
If you’re a member of the BBB, then your business information is automatically listed on their Web site.
If you use the phone book for advertising, then your information could now be included in the phone company’s Internet directory.

Unfortunately, even though it seems unfair to be penalized for something you didn’t personally do, Google doesn’t differentiate between intentional and unintentional spamming. The best way to counteract this is to make sure all of the information about your business matches at all times. This will get you the best placement for your business, once its Web presence is well optimized, and help ensure that none of your listings gets rejected.

Unsure of What’s Out There?

Have you heard about our WebFax™ Report? In the same way that you should never buy a car without a full report on its history, you should always keep close tabs on your company’s online footprint. The more muddled your Web presence becomes, the more difficult and ineffective ALL of your online marketing efforts will become. Our WebFax Report will tell you all about your business’s history on the Internet, and you can use that information to keep your online advertising campaigns working as effectively as possible. Contact us for more details!

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters, Tips and Tricks | Tagged business listing, google maps, Google Places | Leave a response

Stay Positive: Manage Your Online Reputation!

By prospectgenius on November 29, 2011

One of the best ways for you to enhance the online reputation of your business is to promote reviews and testimonials about your services from past customers. Maintaining a positive online reputation is key to the future growth of your business.

However, motivating clients to provide you with quality reviews is not quite as easy as it sounds. At Prospect Genius, we’ve developed a few strategies in our own attempts to gather more customer reviews, and we’re happy to share them here because they may be helpful for persuading your customers to provide reviews.

The first step could be making a direct appeal to your clients. Call or send a postcard with a casual request, such as: “Hey, I’m really trying to build my online reputation, and I was wondering if you could take a few minutes to review how you felt about the work I did for you. I strive to do the best job possible for all of my clients, and I need to know if I’m doing well and where there are areas for improvement. I am going to e-mail you a link to my Google Maps page, and if you could provide me some feedback, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

If that simple measure doesn’t result in any response, you might consider offering a one-time discount to clients who write you a review.

Conversely, if your past customers say that they are too busy to leave a review but loved your service, ask them if you can write the review for them. Type out what they say on the phone and ask if you can use a written version of that statement on your Web site. Then you can contact us, and we’ll put those reviews up on your microsite.

Respond to Every Negative Review

If you do get an unflattering review, take the time to respond when you see that a customer is less than satisfied with your performance. This action will show initiative and genuine interest in how well your business is serving your customers. A sincere, thoughtful response will go a long way in assuring this particular client, as well as future customers, that you’re dedicated to their honest satisfaction.

A good example of both accumulating good reviews and responding to bad reviews can be seen in R.J. Hidson Photography’s map listing. Below, take note of how the owner responds to “Joy,” an unhappy customer.

The photographer responds by addressing the customer’s feelings, and then he explains why he may appear stern or rushed when completing a photography shoot. His is able to defend his creative instincts and show both sides of the situation not only to “Joy,” but to prospective clients as well.

There are several ways to react to a less-than-great review online. The method above is probably the best when your Google or Yahoo maps page also has several positive reviews to balance it out. On the other hand, if your Google or Yahoo maps page only contains bad reviews, you can contact Prospect Genius for help. We will work with you to create a customized reputation management plan that will gradually counteract these poor reviews and put your business back in a positive light.

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters | Tagged customer feedback, negative reviews, online reputation | Leave a response

If Your Business Stalls, Call 41CALLS

By prospectgenius on November 11, 2011

As a new way to reach out to potential clients, Prospect Genius has just started up a new radio advertising campaign. Broadcast on 104.9 and 100.9 FM, this new radio ad focuses on drawing attention to our effective search engine optimization product. With a target audience of Capital District-area business owners, this ad is coming right into their work sites and service trucks to let them know about our ability to help them connect with new customers on the Web.

Using the catchy phone number 518-41CALLS, this radio ad lets small business owners in our area know how to harness our effective online marketing program. Many companies like appliance repair pros and trash haulers are struggling to find new customers, especially in today’s tough economy. But that doesn’t mean those prospective customers aren’t out there! Our 41CALLS campaign is here to let these business owners know that we can help them find the job leads they need, simply by helping them achieve a more prominent Internet presence to reach out to the locals who are already looking for their services online.

If you’ve heard our 41CALLS radio ad, or you found out about Prospect Genius from a friend or other source, we’d love to let you know more about our program and how it can help you. Feel free to contact us today to learn how search engine optimization (SEO) can help your business.

Posted in Blog Posts | Tagged 41CALLS, 518-41CALLS, Capital District, lead generation, online advertising, Prospect Genius, search engine optimization, seo | Leave a response

The Small Mistake that Could Kill Your SEO Campaign

By prospectgenius on October 26, 2011

Navigating Your Online Identity

Here at Prospect Genius, we know how important it is for our clients to be able to track the return on their investment with our SEO program. That’s why we create a metered number and trackable microsite (with a URL that follows the format “some-service-city.state-biz.com”) so you know which leads are coming in from your Prospect Genius campaign.

We spend a great deal of time promoting these numbers and microsites all across the Internet and on many different sites. Sometimes, Google and Bing reps will personally call these phone numbers to confirm that they are active and live, as well as that they actually communicate with the correct business.

So here’s the important part: If Google calls you and asks if your Web site is:

“http ://some-service-city.state-biz.com”

…say YES!

While your personal Web site might be “bobsappliancerepair.com,” for example, if you tell Google that the microsite we created for you isn’t affiliated with your business, you are effectively killing your PG campaign. Why? Because Google will then assume that your listing with the URL “http ://some-service-city-state.biz.com” is spam and your information will be blacklisted. Basically, that means we will have to create a new URL for you and begin your campaign all over again. This will, of course, result in fewer phone calls for your business during the initial three-month period—not to mention a whole lot of unwanted frustration.

Just Say Yes to the Address!

If you’re ever in doubt when receiving a call from Google about whether a phone number, URL, or Web address DOES in fact belong to you, it’s always better to say yes than to say no. After you’ve confirmed ownership with Google, you can simply call your sales or customer service rep here at Prospect Genius to ask if the phone number or URL does belong to us. If it doesn’t, we can then contact Google to correct the mistake. However, if you tell Google right off the bat that the URL is not yours, Google will instantly blacklist it. There is no way to go back and correct this and there will be no way to get the URL back on Google.

Speaking of Google…

What You Should Know About Google’s Latest Update

As of Friday, October 14, Google has implemented new strategies that it hopes will keep owner-verified business listings as up to date and accurate as possible. Effective immediately, Google will grab data from all over the Web to automatically update your Google Places listing as a “time-saver” for you.

If you’ve received an e-mail from Google saying as much, it’s very important that you contact us immediately. We’re unsure about what these automatic updates and revisions may mean in the future for your Places listing and campaign performance—especially given the shady tactics that some competitors are already using—so we want to be able to keep your listing 100% correct at all times.

Please contact us as soon as possible if you’ve recently received an e-mail from Google about your Places listing.

Introducing: Google Maps Monitoring Service

Google doesn’t have a stellar record when it comes to letting business owners know about changes to their listings, and even though Google’s announcement claims they will notify business owners via e-mail as soon as something is changed using this new automatic update system, it’s unwise to depend solely on their promptness or discretion. It’s essential that you monitor your Places listing on your own and check your e-mail regularly since contact from Google can be unreliable.

The good news is that you can hire Prospect Genius to handle monitoring your Places listing if you don’t have the time to check on it every few days. In light of this new update from Google, we are rolling out a brand-new Google Maps monitoring service. It will alert you immediately if your information is changed or if a third party reports your business as “permanently closed.” Right now, this is the most effective way to combat Google’s questionable strategy and keep your Places listing as accurate and optimized as possible.

For additional information about our Google Maps Monitoring Service or to learn more about how PG can help, feel free to contact your sales or customer service rep today.

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters | Tagged Google Algorithm, Google Places, Google spam, Prospect Genius, search engine optimization | Leave a response

Are Online Advertising Myths Causing You to Make Costly Mistakes?

By prospectgenius on September 30, 2011

We’ve talked about this issue a bit in past posts, but since this topic keeps coming up, it’s definitely worth reiterating how common mistakes can lead to some pretty major consequences. Since there is about a 50% chance you’re making at least one of these mistakes, please read this post carefully. Some of the consequences are severe, so it’s best to avoid them if you can. If you have any questions about these costly online advertising myths or how they can hurt you, don’t hesitate to call. The PG team is always happy to help!

Campaign Hopping Redux

We’ve previously mentioned why it’s not a good idea to bounce from one SEO campaign to the next every couple of months, but today we’re going to go a little more in depth about the potentially major damage to your business that this can cause.

When you move from one Internet advertising company to the next, hopping to a different one every few months, a trail of outdated information typically accumulates. In short order, you will have acquired a handful of addresses, eight or ten different phone numbers, and even a couple of variations on your company’s name.

That’s no big deal—everyone has old contact info and such on the Web, right? Well, actually it is a pretty serious problem for your company, because when it comes to Google, it really is the difference between life and death!

Picture it as a courtroom. Your company is on trial, with Google as the judge and your SEO company as your lawyer. If you tell the judge eight or ten different stories, you’re probably headed nowhere but jail. If you have five different lawyers telling the judge multiple stories, you’re going to jail. On the other hand, if you consistently provide the judge with accurate, logical information with the help of a single expert lawyer, you’ll be able to go home to your kids at the end of the day.

You have to care about having conflicting info online because Google cares. You may not like it, but when it comes to search results, Google is the judge, jury, and executioner. If you don’t play by their rules, you’re, unfortunately, going to suffer the consequences.

Choose Your Online Advertisers Carefully

This is not to say you can only ever use one SEO company for all of your online advertising. But you do have to be careful about which companies you choose and which types of campaigns you’re running at the same time.

Let’s continue with the courtroom analogy from above: The U.S. legal system allows you to hire one lawyer while still using a co-counsel or two. That’s because they work together as one entity rather than separate bodies. In the same way, you can hire one SEO company (as your “lawyer”) to manage local and organic campaigns and still engage a different company (as “co-counsel”) to do a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign. Because the PPC campaign deals with the sponsored link sections of Google, there is very little overlap in the local/organics area and few, if any, conflicts will arise.

For more details on this topic, check out this earlier post.

Potential Consequences

However, if you’re working with several SEO companies, and they do give Google conflicting information, you’re setting yourself up for a wide range of problems and penalties. In most cases, when they come across different addresses, phone numbers, and other mismatched info for the same company, Google will decide that you’re a spammer and simply stop believing anything—and everything—you tell them. The outcome is a severe reduction in potential success any time you start an Internet advertising campaign with a new company.

If you’re even less fortunate, you may find yourself facing penalties from Google. Penalties can be tied to any of your identifying information, including your Web site address, phone number, physical address, company name, or a combination of these. That means your rankings could be capped at page 2, page 5, or even page 50, so you may as well kiss the prospect of a first-page ranking goodbye!

Now you may be thinking that your business will be okay as long as you don’t do anything wrong personally, but think again. As soon as any one of the companies you hired for Internet advertising acts against Google’s guidelines on your behalf, your company can be banned. And, sadly, this situation can be nearly impossible to fix, costing you significant time and money. Trust us—this is NOT something you want to happen to your business.

The moral of this story is that even the best SEO company can only swim upstream for so long. Before you’re going to have a chance at success with future campaigns, you must clean up the mess previous advertisers left behind on the Web. And you’re not alone: More and more businesses are finding themselves dealing with this reality.

Watch Yourself!

The great news is that you don’t have to fall victim to this potentially devastating problem. The easiest way to avoid it, in fact, is just to do your homework!

Research every online advertiser you’re considering doing business with. Do a Web search for the company’s name coupled with words like “scam,” “complaints,” or “reviews” to get a preliminary feel for whether they can be trusted.
Ask for references, and then make sure you actually call them. For a reputable company, it should be easy to provide four or five solid references for you to speak with. But you also have to take a moment to call the references and get their direct input. These folks are business owners just like you, and they’ll be your best resource for reliable information and an honest opinion about the SEO company you’re considering.
Keep tabs on your online footprint. As the owner of the business, you—and only you—are the one who can truly own up to this responsibility. By being an active participant in any online advertising campaign, you can stay on top of what information is being connected with your company on the Web.

Get a WebFax™ Report

Prospect Genius has just started offering a new WebFax report service to help with the problems outlined above. In the same way most people wouldn’t buy a used car without seeing a report detailing the facts about the car, you won’t want to sign up for an online advertising campaign without a WebFax report about your company!

Our WebFax report will show you all of the different information that exists online for your business: phone numbers, addresses, company names, and Web sites. This can be the first step in eliminating current problems with your Internet advertising efforts, or it can simply help keep you aware of your online presence.

Take control by taking an active role in protecting your business and safeguarding the success of your online advertising—call us today to get your WebFax Report!

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters, Tips and Tricks | Tagged Google, online advertising, Prospect Genius, seo | 1 Response

Fresh Off the Press: Announcing New Product Offerings to Help Your SEO Campaign

By prospectgenius on September 19, 2011

The PG team is continually working to ensure our customers receive the best, most comprehensive service. As a result, we’re constantly coming up with new ideas of how to better serve you. Today we’d like to announce a few brand-new product offerings that will help us make certain you really are getting a full-spectrum of top-quality options for your online advertising campaign.

E-mail to Phone

Do your e-mails sit around for days (or longer) because you just don’t have time to check the computer? Are you not a huge fan of e-mail in general? Well, at PG, we’ve just launched a product that lets you get your e-mail on your phone. Here’s how it works: Each time you get an e-mail lead, the program triggers a call to your phone. The system reads the e-mail message aloud to you and then follows up with a text message containing the caller’s phone number. It’s like having a personal secretary to read all of your e-mails to you! With PG’s E-mail to Phone program, you’re just a button or two away from returning the call—and you don’t even have to turn on the computer or open your inbox.

Blogging

Share your expertise, announce news/events, and improve your Google ranking all at the same time! Prospect Genius has added a blogging product/tool that allows you to add blog entries right on your microsite. Blogging on your site offers several versatile advantages.

For starters, having good content on your site makes your company more attractive to consumers. When you post blog entries like “Tips for Keeping Your Dryer in Top Condition” or “How to Know If You Need Air Conditioner Repair,” you illustrate your expertise to potential customers and grow their confidence in your knowledge and services.

Secondly, each and every blog post adds another page to your microsite. So if you post 100 blog entries over the course of the next year, you will have transformed your 15-page site into a 115-page site. More pages makes your microsite more credible to Google and Bing, because the larger your site, the more important it seems to the search engines.

Half-Price Until November 1

These two new products are going to be in a beta-testing period for the next couple of weeks, but we are offering a limited number of half-price openings until November 1. If you want to be one of the very first PG clients to experience the benefits of our E-mail to Phone or Blogging features, give us a call and we’ll get you signed up today.

Photo Gallery

You’re right: Photo galleries aren’t precisely a new offering from PG, but since they work almost the same way our new blogging feature does, we wanted to remind you how beneficial our Photo Gallery option can be. Just like each blog post creates a new page on your microsite, with the photo gallery, every new picture you add creates another “page” for your site. When you go ahead and add captions to each picture, especially those containing keywords (think: “ABC Appliance provides professional refrigerator repairs to a client in New York, NY.”), you can get even more value out of this new “page.” More pictures equal more points with Google and Bing.

For a little perspective, this is exactly how big companies like Walmart and Sears stay at the top of the results pages for service searches. Their sites have literally thousands of “pages” because they include a descriptive photo page for each and every product/service that they offer.

Coming Attractions

Next up in terms of new product offerings is our review validation service. Available very soon, this feature will allow you to not only collect customer reviews directly on your microsite, but it will also enable you to have a third party validate them.

The simple truth is that customers view reviews with skepticism. After all, they have no way of knowing if that glowing review was fabricated or written by a real, satisfied customer. Our validation system will actually contact the reviewer by phone or e-mail to verify that they are legit. Once the review has been validated, an icon will appear next to it, illustrating to prospective customers that this review is accurate, authorized, and able to be trusted!

If you’re interested in signing up for the beta-testing period on this feature, just give us a call, and we’ll make sure you get on the preorder list.

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters | Tagged Blogging, online advertising, Prospect Genius, search engine optimization | 1 Response

EDriven Concepts: Posting Bogus Reviews to Manage Reputation and Counteract Mounting Negativity

By prospectgenius on September 7, 2011

As a business owner, reputation management is an integral part of maintaining a positive image for your company, especially when it comes to your Internet presence. Given the immense number of online business directories and consumer complaint forums, it’s fairly easy for anyone to post reviews of your business for public viewing. Unfortunately, this means that if any of your past customers has had a poor experience with your business, there’s a strong possibility that they’ll utilize the resources at their disposal to post a complaint online.

One company in particular that is struggling with the issue of customer complaints is EDriven Concepts. Recently, however, it has made efforts to compensate for this negativity. If you’re a business owner looking for a way to counteract customer complaints online, take note of EDriven Concepts’ strategy and avoid it.

Why EDriven Concepts Needs to Manage Its Reputation

Lately, EDriven Concepts has seen a mounting pile of negative reviews all over the Web. They have been accused of scamming business owners through deceptive sales calls and fraudulent information, and are now tasked with having to manage their reputation in order to keep these negative reviews from surfacing on Google’s search results pages. Some of those negative reviews can be found here:

The user reviews on Scambook, ComplaintWire, and Brownbook all detail the same scenario:

A business owner receives a call from a representative of EDriven Concepts posing as whichever SEO company that business was currently working with.
The sales rep from EDriven Concepts refers to a previous conversation with the business owner that never actually took place, thus confusing the business owner.
The sales rep requests the business owner’s credit card information but never states his/her true identity.
The sales rep hangs up when pushed by the business owner to reveal his/her identity.

In the Yelp review, a different individual also writes about an experience that she had with EDriven Concepts, wherein she was contacted by a sales rep who was pretending to be from her current advertising agency. They finally revealed their true identity when she asked for her specific account manager, but this was after they had already asked for her credit card information on three separate occasions.

[If you’d like to listen to audio samples of similar phone calls between EDriven Concepts and existing Prospect Genius clients, check out our previous blog post.]

As you can see, these kinds of reviews can be rather damning to a company’s reputation. That’s why it’s important to counteract any negativity surrounding your business with an effective reputation management strategy. This is not, however, what EDriven Concepts has done.

How EDriven Concepts Is Attempting to Manage Its Reputation

While you don’t have the power to permanently delete user comments and reviews on sites that are not your own, there are ways to neutralize them. A very simple way of doing this is to post an even greater number of positive reviews, so that the negative ones will be drowned out.

EDriven Concepts has begun an attempt to push the negative reviews down the search engine rankings by writing and duplicating their own positive reviews. We’ve been following their attempts at reputation management for a few weeks, and their strategy has piqued our interest because their efforts illustrate a clear pattern:

They write a fictional yet lengthy testimonial on behalf of a nonexistent company.
They create fake accounts on various blog sites.
Using these fake accounts, they post the same testimonial in multiple locations.

Below, you’ll see a sampling of different testimonials created by EDriven Concepts that are intended to quash negative reviews that are all over the Internet. While they have succeeded in diluting the volume of complaints against them with a handful of fictitious blog posts, the deceptive nature of these posts is wholly transparent to any casual reader. Sadly, this practice won’t get them far.

We’ll continue to update this post as we find more examples.

First group of false testimonials: “is edriven concepts a scam”

This set of blog posts by EDriven Concepts contains identical reviews from a company called “Apex Plumbing.” The posts detail the experience of “Leroy Gonzales,” an alleged plumber from Dallas, TX, and are given the title, “is edriven concepts a scam,” (that’s not a typo—no punctuation or capitalization are included in the original posts). Right off the bat, there are several elements that stand out as red flags:

A comprehensive search of the White Pages and other Internet directories showed zero results for a Leroy Gonzales or Apex Plumbing in the Dallas area.
The titular question, “Is EDriven Concepts a scam?” is never addressed nor answered.
The team at EDriven Concepts is leveraging a common search term (“is edriven concepts a scam”) by using it as the post’s title with the sole purpose of directing curious readers to a fabricated story.
The fact that the phrase, “is edriven concepts a scam,” is a popular search term tells you that they already have a reputation for scamming clients.

By the time you get to the third sentence of the review, you already know that the premise is completely false.

Second group of false reviews: “As a small business owner I set out to do due diligence…”

The reviews in this group are all identical, with slightly revised titles, under the pretense of a “small business owner” seeking a “quality SEO company.” However, none of the review’s contents coincide with that alleged reality. There are several holes in this review’s logic—for example:

It is 584 words long. Your first thought should be, “What kind of ‘small business owner’ has the time or motivation to write a nearly 600-word review for another company?”
If it were a legitimate customer review, it would be a short paragraph on a popular consumer directory like Yelp, Brownbook, Manta, Hotfrog, etc. Instead, these are standalone blog accounts that are named after EDriven Concepts and contain only one lengthy post.
The review is filled with detailed personal histories of EDriven Concepts personnel. Why would an ordinary client be privy to this kind of information?
It’s fair to say that no average “small business owner” would be familiar with programs like PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, etc., much less identify a team with expertise in those fields.
The company remains anonymous throughout the entire review. If the EDriven Concepts program worked so well, why isn’t there a link to the business’s Web site? Why isn’t there a name for referral? Why isn’t there any evidence of the program’s efficacy?

Given the combination of blatantly promotional language and zero specificity regarding the actual job performed for this anonymous client, the average reader can easily conclude that this is a fictional review written by EDriven Concepts themselves.

Third group of false reviews: “Is Edriven Concepts Fraudulent? Let’s find out!”

Netlog.com
Dailystrength.com (an online support group)
Wikispaces.com

These are more examples of fake user accounts containing a total of one blog post each. After reading the post in its entirety, you can discount its validity quite easily, as it:

Describes the process of SEO but never offers an answer to the question in the title
Offers no statistics, links, or evidence whatsoever to support the legitimacy of EDriven Concepts
Is written by an “Ezra Finch” who has no profile information, credentials, or authority on the subject

Anyone who has done an hour’s worth of research online can write about what constitutes good SEO practices. However, the fact that this author writes only in vague terms and never offers a direct response to the question in the title reveals that this is yet another blog post designed to misdirect users searching for an actual answer to this question.

Throughout all of these attempts at fabricating and duplicating reviews, EDriven Concepts only serves to exemplify the dishonesty that they are accused of. As a business owner, you can still learn from their mistakes. The only way to manage your company’s reputation effectively and honestly is to provide a valuable service and encourage satisfied customers to spread the word.

Posted in Blog Posts, Tips and Tricks | Leave a response

Too Busy to Advertise Online?

By prospectgenius on September 5, 2011

Some customers tell us that they WANT to sign up, but they just don’t have time to do it. What they’re really saying is that they don’t want to take an active role in the promotion of their own business.

We understand that you’re busy, and that being a small business owner often entails a hectic schedule, but if you don’t take the time to actively participate in promoting your business as accurately as possible, the consequences can be disastrous!

No matter how many jobs you have lined up or how complicated your schedule has become, it’s critical that you take an active interest in the information circulated on the Internet regarding your company. So shuffle your calendar or take a quick break, and spend a little while focusing on how your company is being promoted on the Web. Remember, the content generated and distributed by an online advertiser on your behalf DIRECTLY reflects on your company and represents your brand.

If you allow inaccurate, low-quality, or just plain wrong information to spread out all over the Internet, the message you send to potential customers is that your reputation and professional image are not important to you in the slightest. Customers will assume automatically that these errors and inaccuracies are an indication of how you conduct yourself as a general rule, seeing them as symptoms of an overall lack of professionalism and customer service.

Web Advertising: How Much Time Should You Spend?

So, if taking a little time to sign up for a program that promises to create a Web presence for you (in the form of a Web site, advertisements, etc.) is to the benefit of your company, how long will it take? The answer varies from business to business, but you can be certain it’s more than two minutes!

Consider it this way: Could you walk up to a stranger on the street and describe each and every service you offer in just two minutes? Probably not! So why is it fair to expect a third-party advertiser to understand all the nuances of your business in that short an amount of time?

Here at Prospect Genius, it doesn’t take long to sign up, but we do make sure we learn all about your business. The time you invest at this stage gives our team more ammunition to promote your business online, in the end helping drive maximum traffic back to you.

Just how long does it take? Well, in our experience, when a new client signs up with PG, the initial interview typically takes between 20 and 30 minutes. The follow-up interview usually lasts another 10 or 15 minutes. If you’re a chatty person, or your company offers a number of different services, you could spend up to 90 minutes on the phone with us going over the type of work your business does and what makes your company unique.

Everything that you tell us about your company is the fuel we need to make sure your business is represented accurately and promoted efficiently on the Web, ensuring you get the most out of your new online presence.

Food for Thought

If a Web advertiser says the signup process will only take 30 seconds, or even just 5 minutes, shouldn’t you be concerned? How will they learn anything about your company in that period of time? Especially if all they want is your billing address and credit card number, the red flags should go up.

At Prospect Genius, we take the approach of using in-depth interviews with a number of different goals in mind:

To make certain you get the types of calls you want (for example, calls for repairing large appliances rather than small appliance repairs)
To ensure we promote your business in the correct location and service areas
To identify the details that make your company special, unique, and different from your competitors

All of these goals are for your direct benefit!

If another online advertising company does NOT invest time in getting to know your business when signing you up (by asking for specific, detailed info about your services, etc.), you may find yourself facing several problems:

They may not be planning on doing a whole lot of work for you, so detailed information would be irrelevant.
They may be planning to send you every and ANY call out there, including junk calls. This can be an especially major issue with a pay-per-lead or pay-per-call system.
They may just be planning to copy and paste from your existing Web site, duplicating content and potentially earning penalties from Google.
They may be planning to spam Google Maps by posting a slew of phony addresses on your company’s map listings page. This may give your company a quick boost in Google rankings, but any unverifiable addresses will be blacklisted by Google. Since your Web site will be connected to one of those map listings, you’ll also be risking a penalty on Google’s results pages. In extreme cases, Google may even penalize your business name and phone number across the board.

Why It Really Matters

So what? What’s the worst that can happen if you choose to use a Web advertising company that doesn’t take the time to learn about you and your business? That’s a really good question because one answer is that you could even go to JAIL!

Sounds extreme, right? Never gonna happen, right? Actually, we’re not kidding. Imagine you sign up with “Advertiser X” and spend just one minute giving them your credit card info and business name, but almost nothing else in terms of information. Then, if Advertiser X puts content on your Web site that includes false claims of certifications, memberships, or licenses you don’t actually have, you could easily end up on the wrong end of a sting operation.

Several states, including California, are seriously cracking down on these types of violations because the resulting fines are a source of revenue for their cash-strapped coffers. In fact, some of our clients have endured similar situations because they failed to comply with some aspect of state law regarding exactly how you can advertise your services.

Of course, these are the most extreme examples, but the threat of fines and penalties is REAL. In the end, it’s up to you as the business owner to verify that the content on the Internet regarding your company is 100% accurate.

Vet Advertisers Carefully

With all that can go wrong through cutting-corners or just plain sketchy online advertising, it’s vital that you be careful when choosing who will represent your company’s interests on the Internet. In the same way you wouldn’t hire just anyone to answer your phone, you’re better off not hiring just anyone for online advertising.

What an advertiser puts out there about your company invariably becomes the basis for first impressions for many potential customers. If there’s information on the Web that’s untrue, misleading, or even misspelled, it could end up costing you a whole lot more than the 30 minutes it would have taken to do it right in the first place!

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters, Tips and Tricks | Tagged Google spam, online advertising, Prospect Genius, small businesses, Web marketing | Leave a response

Voice Mail: Solution or Danger

By prospectgenius on August 23, 2011

At Prospect Genius, we work with a broad spectrum of small, local companies, and that puts us in a unique position to observe trends in the ways small businesses handle their operations. Recently, we’ve noticed that some of our clients, especially the one-person outfits, are too busy to answer their phone during the day. Instead, they let the calls go through to their voice mail and return the messages once they have time.
On one hand, this is great news: We’re excited that so many folks are getting enough work to keep them this busy. On the other hand, this may end up being a major problem for your company: That’s because when you let your calls ring through to voice mail, you may actually end up missing out on phone calls that could lead to additional customers and additional profits.

The Issue With Voice Mail

With online advertising, we’ve observed that the majority of customers will pick up the phone and call you within a minute or two of landing on your Web site. Unfortunately, we’ve also noticed that if a real person doesn’t answer the call, these prospective clients will likely hang up without leaving a message. In fact, only a very small percentage of callers will actually leave a message on your voice mail. Worse, most will just click the “back” on their Web browser, return to the search results page, and call the next company on the list—likely a direct competitor!

The biggest problem with this scenario is that not answering your calls means that you lose the ability to capture what could be extremely profitable jobs. Think about it this way: It’s great that your business is keeping busy with multiple jobs, but in an ideal world, you’d be able to hand pick the closest, most profitable jobs instead of working yourself to the bone on projects that are farther away or have a lower profit margin.

Option #1

The good news is that there are ways to balance the issue of a ringing phone with the project on hand. Perhaps the easiest solution, yet one many folks don’t even think of, is an answering service. This option is surprisingly affordable, and in many cases, there are even companies that employ only native English speakers if customer service and communication skills are a concern for you. With an answering service, calls will be answered on your behalf, with messages being relayed to you as if you just stepped away from the phone for a moment.

Some answering services immediately send you an e-mail or text message explaining the nature and priority level of the call. Others may even provide you with an option for specifying which calls you would like forwarded to you without delay and which calls you would like to receive a message about.

With an answering service, your customers get the benefit of talking to a real person and you get the benefit of uninterrupted time to work on your current job without missing out on potentially profitable work for the future.

Option #2

If hiring an answering service isn’t in the cards, and your budget doesn’t allow bringing in a receptionist or assistant to answer the phone, your best bet is to simply make the most out of your voice mail recording.

Start by making certain your voice mail sounds as professional as possible. Assure your clients that their call is important to you, and that their message will be returned as soon as possible. Here’s a great example:

“Hi. You’ve reached Bob’s Plumbing of Boston, MA. We are unable to answer the phone at the moment because we are busy providing first-class service to one of our clients. We want to provide this same level of service to you, so please leave us a message, and we’ll return your call later today.”

Prospect Genius Voice Mail Solutions

Did you know that you can enable a separate voice mail account just for your Prospect Genius campaign? Our system allows us to intercept calls after a few rings and play a message like the one shown above. We’ll then e-mail any message left on your voice mail to you immediately.

This service can be extremely helpful if you’re trying to juggle multiple businesses on a single phone line or if you just want to keep your PG campaign separate from other advertising efforts. If this voice mail service sounds like something you’d like to explore for your company, just give us a call, and the Prospect Genius team can help you out!

Posted in Blog Posts, Newsletters | Tagged local businesses, online advertising, Prospect Genius, voice mail | Leave a response

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