Throughout my professional life in digital marketing, I often would witness patterns that underscore foundational truths about business, trust, and ethics. Over the years, I have found that the simple salesman ethos of underpromising and overdelivering isn’t just a professional virtue. In fact, it’s a life principle that can save time, heartache, and resources.
Much of my career has involved fixing the mistakes of supposedly professional marketing firms. It’s not like I should mind, as it was more business for me. But, when I learned the high amounts of money these individuals and companies paid for subpar, ineffectual content and marketing strategy, it would blow my mind, time after time.
I recall countless times when I stepped in to rectify the shortcomings of such marketing ventures, observing the huge discrepancies between promised results and the actual outcome. This divergence wasn’t only detrimental to the client’s trust in the marketing industry, but also wasted precious time and resources. But, I’m not here to point fingers; rather I want to explore a deeper issue: the importance of genuine commitment.
Trust is More Than a Contract
Behind every contractual agreement lies an invisible thread of trust. However, there are instances where individuals, under the guise of expertise, compromise this trust. It’s not the honest mistakes that are the problem; everyone is prone to err from time to time. The real concern is the willful overcommitment and under-delivery, often executed by those seeking quick gains.
Many digital marketers work hard on earning an honest living doing good SEO and content work for businesses. Who gives us all a bad name are those fly-by-nighters who call themselves “experts,” take people’s money, then proceed to do a deplorable job – even under contract. As someone who often comes in just to fix those mistakes, such jobs often pay a fraction of the original cost. That’s because the marketing budget was blown on low-quality work.
Herein lies the key question: what role do we, as consumers or businesses seeking services, play in this narrative? Are we too hasty to believe lofty promises without probing deeper? We must learn to be discerning. Being well-informed, asking the right questions, and trusting our intuition can save us from these potential pitfalls.
Beware of Those Who Overpromise
When I was still working as an in-house marketing assistant, one of my employer’s affiliate companies decided to revamp its website. They brought in an outside marketing firm to undertake this task. This shocked me as the website our team built in-house was already ranking fairly well in the search engines. The SEO was good enough that it was already bringing a fair amount of local organic search traffic.
But, the director of the affiliate wanted more leads from the website. Drawn in by the allure and overblown promises of a new site design, they inevitably sacrificed functionality for aesthetics. The result is that the site lost its ability to communicate effectively with search engines. It did look nice, at first. The problem was that most of the important text was stuck inside of images or in strange I-frames that the search engines had difficulty reading.
Previously, I had done considerable SEO work on this very website. The original design had been clean and simple. The logo was crisp and well-designed, and was also made in-house. This company threw everything out, and even changed all the page names from .htm to .html. Changing page name extensions in this way without proper redirects is a major no-no in SEO.
So, because the search engines were puzzled, there was nothing to keep the creepy-crawly search spiders interested. Thus, the site’s existing SEO was ruined, and content that might have been perfectly fine if properly optimized simply wasn’t doing its job. As you might expect, web traffic plummeted and the website dropped off the front page of search results across the board. My boss was furious.
This was more than just a loss of traffic; it was a costly lesson in the importance of preserving what works and understanding the intricacies of change. Often, in our eagerness for progress and enhancement, we inadvertently complicate the simple and effective. Innovation is essential, but not at the expense of disregarding tried and tested methodologies.
The Real Cost of Broken Promises
In the end, this overpromising and underdelivering marketing firm still got paid upfront for the work. The in-house team and I had already recommended against hiring that firm in the first place, and it turns out we were absolutely correct. We had no intention of giving them direct access to the site as they asked for initially, and it’s a good thing they didn’t get it, at least not at first.
This whole process was a mess. The firm would send me “fixed” HTML pages in emails. But, they were such a disaster, with plenty of mistakes made in the HTML code and title tags. The actual content of the pages was perfectly serviceable, but as the site was now constituted, it would get little to no actual eyeballs on it. It seemed as if we were paying these people just to annoy us. Then, they somehow got direct access and wiped out the existing site in place of their own. I was aghast.
The final straw came when they asked me to go out and research inbound links. As the “webmaster,” it was apparently my duty to go and ask politely for backlinks at their behest. Of course, that was supposed to be part of their job! They didn’t make any good suggestions, either, insisting on contacting spammy directories which would have actually hurt the rankings rather than helped them. Yet, they ordered me to go and do it as if I were working for them.
Fortunately, when I told my boss about this incident, I was heard this time. The firm was subsequently fired when they asked for more money, complaining that I wasn’t working nicely with them. My boss ultimately took the side of our in-house team, but unfortunately, it was only after they were already paid too much to begin with.
Learning to Value Internal Expertise
It was an eye-opening moment for our company leadership when external “experts” were brought in only to falter at every step. The happy part is that it revealed an often-overlooked treasure trove: in-house talent. Many companies will chase external validations, sidelining their own employees who possess nuanced understanding and commitment. By valuing in-house expertise, organizations can save resources and cultivate an internal culture of trust and appreciation.
In the aftermath of this failed venture, our in-house marketing team tore down the site once again, rebuilding it from the old version we had wisely backed up previously. All we kept was a couple of useful keyword phrases and snippets from the “fixed” web pages that had value. The new logo was also retained, to our team’s chagrin, although there was nothing wrong with it. Within a few months, the search engine rankings were back to where they had been before. But, at that point, the damage was irreversible and eventually that affiliate closed up shop.
So, how can businesses stop getting duped by people acting like they know what they’re doing? My advice is to simply turn to in-house staff, only hiring external help when there is a clear need to complement your existing talent, without potentially alienating them in the process.
Here are some actionable insights that professionals in any field can use:
Seek Authenticity: Before entering any professional agreement, verify credentials, ask for proven track records, and trust your own instincts.
Value Simplicity: Avoid complicating effective systems. Innovation should complement, not compromise, existing efficacy.
Empower In-house Talent: Recognize and invest in the potential of your internal team. They often hold unparalleled insights into your business ethos.
Always Underpromise and Overdeliver: As professionals, be realistic in commitments and always strive to exceed expectations.
With literally any business in any field, it’s the simple principles that stand the test of time. I suggest integrating authenticity, trust, and introspection as a trinity of core values into our professional lives. That way, we can all pitch in to build robust businesses that not only succeed but also endure.
~ Amelia Desertsong, March 2023
