Snake Oil for Sale....

I freely admit that I know nothing about my car's engine. I probably should have paid attention in that Driver Ed class when they were showing us the parts of the engine, but chances are good the high school girl I was crushing on that week was paying me a modicum of attention and I shifted my focus. In hindsight I wish I had looked at the engine.

Now I find myself in the position that every time the mechanic tells me it is a blown this or a muffled that I just nod, stammer, and write the check to make it go away. I know my car is important - I know I pay good money for it every month - and as such I am willing to take the advice of someone else on how to make it work better.

The same holds true when it comes to internet marketing, and I saw it today. I met with a builder friend of our firm; he asked me if I would come to his place and let his "team" pick my brain. Wow, not sure which one of us came away more amazed.

They were amazed because I told them words they had never heard before: analytics, pay-per-click, twitter, etc. In fairness they had actually heard them before, but much as I hear about my exhaust manifold and my oil pump they really had little idea what they were. All they knew is that they had some marketing dollars to spend in 2010 and they didn't think that glossy magazine was going to cut it anymore. I was there to (in an hour or less) open up the world of the internet to them.

But what may have been more shocking is what they told me they had coming next. They were about to meet with some "internet expert" who was going to sell them a "search engine business maximizer" with "proprietary technology" that would get their name to the top of the Google results. Paid results, mind you...the ones any of us can get to the top of with the right amount of coin.

Yes, they were going to charge them a premium so that they could log into Google AdWords on their behalf and set up the account. The builder would chose the phrases (so much for value creation, eh) and this "expert" would set them up. To top it off, the proposal included "state of the art call monitoring" by which any calls that came to them would be [insert shock and awe here] tracked [exhale] because they would have a separate number assigned to each ad.

Hopefully as I type this they are telling this vendor they need more time to consider. They need another opinion; they need to find their mechanic friend who can tell them they that don't need those new tires just yet. Chances are good, however, they will end up just nodding, stammering, and writing the check.

Let's hope that doesn't happen...for their sake.