Ad Words: Revenge is Cheap in 2007

First off let me say that I do not condone this sort of activity, however it is rapidly becoming more common place. In the spirit of the season I am going to tell you about a scary new way that people can be destroying your reputation for a couple of bucks a week.

Let's take the fictitious story of Jimmy and his local Porsche dealership. We will pretend that Jimmy went out and bought a brand new 2008 Boxster in his favorite color of Sea Foam Green. Jimmy loved his car for the first 150 miles or so until the engine fell right out of the car in the middle or rush hour traffic. Suddenly Jimmy isn't very happy at all, so he calls the dealership asking them to come get him, the car and what is left of the engine. Well things go from bad to worse and Jimmy is left with his very expensive car and a box of engine pieces standing on the curb.

Our hero eventually gets his car put back together but at an extreme cost and so he vows revenge against the dealership. How does he plan to get revenge? He starts a smear campaign using a "disposable" blog and his adwords account. Jimmy writes an SEO friendly blog and then sets up an adwords account with 20 bucks and just lets it run.

For most dealerships a smear campaign like this would be earth shattering, because the average dealership does not have a reputation manager on staff. If this were to happen to a dealership without a website, or a poorly designed website the ramifications could be catastrophic. It would take the dealership forever to get that link buried if they ever even found out that someone had done this to them.

Microsoft to Help Small Businesses Enter the PPC Market

Today Microsoft announced it's newest "feature" , they are going to offer PPC assistance inside of their Office Live Small Business edition. Personally, I think this is asking for trouble not only for them but for many small businesses who may not be ready for the challenges of adequately managing a PPC campaign. Doesn't this reek of conflict of interest to you? As a consumer I am definitely going to sign up to have my campaigns run by the company who owns the third largest search engine in the world, no questions asked. I am almost guaranteed a fantastic ROI (or so I would think) as it would be stupid of them not to give my campaign a healthy cost per click discount.

The press release says they are going to offer three classes at 19.95 to teach the essentials of SEM and SEO. Wow, I bet my boss would have loved a deal like that when he was spending thousands of dollars training us on SEO and SEM. The reality is that at best these businesses will get a crash course in Live Search, ROI, Adcenter and some basic information on what PPC is. My guess is there won't be real training that covers a/b testing, negative keywords, proper geo targeting by population, the importance of meta data, dynamic landing pages, effective ad copy writing, etc, etc, etc.

If 60 bucks was all it took to become an SEM/SEO expert then every campaign out there would have a fabulous ROI, a 25% conversion rate, and a CPC of under $3.00. The majority of these companies are going to set up their own SEM campaigns and then forget them, which is terrible for the industry as a whole. These businesses need to have a strong, well formed online marketing presence handled by a qualified professional who not only has the time but the skills necessary to coax these campaigns into success. The changes to search engine algorithms change regularly which often sends even the most seasoned SEM/SEO experts scurrying to regain lost conversions. Now imagine the effect one of these changes could have on "Jim the Plumber" who believes the hype that this solution is all he needs to secure his dream of retiring next year. It's Microsoft and they are the good guys... Right? When will Microsoft learn from it's own mistakes?

Don't Ignore Me Because I Am A Woman

For those of you who don't know this, I hate my car. More than I hate my car, I am beginning to hate the franchise dealership that is responsible for repairing it.

After many attempts to make a service appointment and failing my car broke down. This was a few weeks back but my car lost its clutch with less than 30,000 miles. I was stranded on a hill in the middle of Friday rush hour, which made me late to dinner with my in laws and I loathe being late. So I called the dealership and freaked out about the clutch dying, the car leaking fluids and the paint falling off. I also complained about the fact that the clutch (a fairly important piece of the drive train if you ask me) was not covered under the warranty after 1 year. We also found out that I need a new steering arm as mine is defective. That part was ordered nearly a month ago today but no one called to tell me the part was in (as promised). Instead the parts guy said he sent me a post card that looks like junk mail.......

This whole thing has been a terrible experience right from the get go. The dealership doesn't return my calls (which I have to leave because they never answer the dang phone) or emails, and when I do reach them they ignore my concerns. Now I may be a woman, but I do know that if you have to hit the clutch twice in order to get in reverse then there is a problem.

The Internet says my synchronizing is off and that could lead to the gears stripping....and that means a new and expensive transmission on a two year old car. I have told the dealership that this is happening in every single call and voice mail I have left in the past two weeks, and they still have not called me back. If they were not the only franchise dealership in town I would have gone somewhere else a long long time ago.

Want to know what really irks me? If my husband reports a problem they fix it immediately!!! When they replaced the clutch the car made a funny buzzing sound, and when we took it in the dealership tried to brush me off until my husband said he had heard it too. Once Josh chimed in the technician was all over getting in the car and going for a ride!

Why does Josh have to chime in for something to be broken? Why isn't my assessment of the situation enough? I know more about cars, engines, and troubleshooting then my sweet husband ever will, and yet he is the one they listen and respond to. This very same dealership has relied on me to resolve highly complicated technical issues for them on multiple occasions , but when it comes to the car itself I am ignored.

The end result is that our new car is a Nissan (not the same as my car) and it was bought from a different dealership just down the street. The new dealership was fantastic to close the deal with. Their staff were helpful, courteous, efficient and gave us a very fair deal. The GM even came in to say hi to us a couple of times while we were in signing paperwork. Oh? and if I tell them something needs to be fixed they fall over themselves to find out the source of my concerns. The new dealership even answers the phone!

What A Girl Wants

The new marketing hype is that women buy more cars, and have a larger influence in the car buying process then ever before, but what does that really mean to a dealership? Search Engine Marketers are driving tons of high quality traffic to your website but how do you convert them?

Women buy relationships as much as they buy cars. I remember when my now husband and I were looking for my car I was that salesman's best friend. At every point of contention that my husband offered I countered for the salesman even though it was costing us money! Why? I liked him. He was a little on the cute side and didn't talk to me like I was a "girl". He answered my questions directly and didn't seem bored with us. Now a few years later I hate my car but I would still buy from that same sales guy again.

Another thing women want is safety. We want proof that the car we are buying is going to be safe to put our loved ones in. Most guys think we care more about color (well OK sometimes we do.... burnt orange is *NOT* the new black) then we do about anything else. We can have pretty colors in our home where our children won't be flying down the street at 60 miles an hour separated by just tires and some fiberglass. We would like to go to your website and get all the information we need (safety ratings, community posting area where we can ask information questions, price, color, options, contact us forms) quickly and without a high pressure sales pitch. Oh and if you can share Gram's recipe for monkey rolls that would be great too :)