Half-assed strategies get you nowhere. This shouldn’t be a revelation, but it might be to a few of you. I don’t usually use crass language in my posts, but this subject warrants alarming verbage.
I had an international client whose brand name you would all recognize, but will remain anonymous here. This client was not willing to spend much money on web marketing due to the particular standards, vision, and business style of their leadership. When profits were down, so went the marketing budget. In other words, they were cheap.
This company wanted to monitor its reputation for potential crises, so I performed a one-off reputation analysis. In early 2008, I delivered an extensive report to the company, detailing the issues, potential issues, and misprints that needed to be addressed. The company thanked me and proceeded to do absolutely NOTHING. They decided that the time, effort, and money required to address the public’s perception of their brand was too costly considering the nation’s economy and some losses already incurred during the year.
Before 2008 ended, this major company declared bankruptcy. Yes, bankruptcy. Granted, the execution of my proposed strategy would have cost them tens of thousands of dollars. It takes some time, effort, and money to rebuild what has been damaged. Client X opted out of the expense. They have since lost billions. Makes you wonder why they balked, eh?
Now, as powerful as it would be for me to use this company as example of what can happen as the result of a bad reputation left unchecked, I must admit that there were multiple factors involved, including the economy and the rising cost to do business, which cut deeply into profits. Add to that dilemma the inability to get credit due to the recession and you get the perfect storm.
Consumer confidence was at an all-time low. The lack of reputation management allowed confidence to erode and when additional shares were offered up to the public, not enough were sold to keep the company afloat. One way or another, your corporate reputation will make or break you. It may not boost your profits to an all-time high, but it could keep you afloat in a recession.
Since September, I’ve heard more than once that indirect methods of ROI are first to go when the economy takes a dive. The board of directors wants to see results, and in times of crisis, narrowmindedness leads to inexcusable vulnerabilities. My ex-client COULD have salvaged something, had their reputation been intact.
Let this be a lesson to all of you who are looking for places to cut corners and free up budget. Your reputation is NOT an area you can afford to sacrifice. Image, reputation, and consumer confidence are what keep commerce alive during rocky times. Are YOU doing what is necessary to guard your brand’s reputation?
Daniel,
I look at things from a slightly different perspective when it comes to half-baked ORM strategies. There have been a handful of examples where clients or potential clients have come to us because they realized (sometimes too late) that free tools left them vulnerable to reputation risk and sometimes significant reputation loss. Specifically, that these businesses were ill-advised by so-called “experts” that ORM could be done with free tools as well as any premium tool on the market.
Ironically, when it came time to deal with the reputation crisis, those same experts who free tools where now asking more in consulting fees than what it would have cost for a premium subscription, with a service that would likely have caught the incident in a timely manner and avereted the crisis. When it comes to raising the awareness bar, I think it is up to the experts entrusted with the responsibility to advise on ORM to make the clear distinction between doing ORM and doing ORM well.
This hits a nerve for me because while some might interpret the pitfall of these businesses being that they looked at ORM as a cost rather than an investment, ultimately some responsibility needs to fall back on the advice they recieved from folks that ought to have provided them with a wider range of solutions, and strategies comprehensive enough to include free and premium offerings.
There may well be a benefit to both Web audiences and the experts when endorsing free tools. However if the experts choose to endorse free tools purely to bolster ad revenue and site hits, then lets be fair and look at how these same endorsements for free tools come with a cost, especially when it interferes with devising effective ORM strategies because its scope is absent of any premium service offerings.
Thanks for listening to my
Joseph
yeesh… the last sentence should thank everyone for listening to my rant.
Joseph,
I’m not sure where free tools come into play in my article. In the example I set forth, free tools were not the primary method of monitoring. The fees would have come from both strategy for response and the actuall implementation of addressing thousands of blogs, forums, tweets, and press releases that were spreading negative comments.
I was using a fairly comprehensive paid tool that I had double checked with other tools to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. So I couldn’t have saved the client money via the tool rather than free tool labor intensive charges.
I was referring to very first sentence in your post – and to be clear, in no way was I painting your experience with the same broad brushstroke.