Lies Lies Lies!!

I’m in the mood for a good rant today…

Tell Me Lies, tell me sweet little lies
~Tell Me Lies, Tell me tell me lies~
Oh no no, you can’t disguise
~You can’t disguise, no you can’t disguise~
Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

It’s a song by Fleetwood Mac called “Tell Me Lies”. Maybe you’ve heard it? Catchy tune. (if you know it, bet you’re singing it in your head!)

So what does it have to do with anything?

I’m fed up with the lies, the pure garbage that is being fed to people and unscrupulous marketing.

… let me tell you a story…

I stepped into the world of touch screen phones. Yep, I got tired of waiting for Blackberry to come out with a new phone for T-Mobile and upgraded into the new HTC Sensation. It’s a touch screen, big display, 4G, has all the bells and whistles, android, easy to use – I love it and so does my wife. My kids love “Angry Birds” – wow what an addictive waste of time that game is eh?!!

I get my first bill and trying to be a good steward I review it to make sure there are no surprises.

Wrong.

2 bogus charges. Ugh. That means I’ve gotta call customer service. Fortunately T-Mobile has great customer service. I usually get a cheery, delightful person who is happy to help. Today was no exception. I got Jessica, a pure delight. She reviewed the charges in question with me.

The first was for insurance. When I got the phone, the sales guy pushed this hard on me. I declined several times and he persisted like a battering ram taking out a castle door. He said “it’s free for 30 days” so I relented and said ok.

Guess what? … it wasn’t free. Not only that, the T-Mobile rep said they have no authority to do that.

My Blood Starts To Boil

The second bogus charge: there’s a monthly charge of $9.99 to allow us to download ringtones from a 3rd party. Neither me or my wife signed up for it. Some cheesy 3rd party company bogussly (is that a word?!!) spammed us some cryptic texts. Irritated, we replied for them to stop.

Well, I guess they didn’t and instead they signed us up for their service and we got dinged for it. Purely unethical in my books. I’m sure they make a tidy profit, afterall how many people have cell phones and how many times do people check their phone bills? The T-Mobile rep said that this kind of stuff unfortunately happens a lot. And to cancel this bogus service, we have to contact the 3rd party and have them remove it. You can be sure I’ll check my bill next month!!

Happy Ending to This Story

Jessica “Your Friendly Neighborhood T-Mobile Rep” to the rescue!! – she reversed both charges and got us all squared away. She made it such a pleasant experience. And I’m grateful for her.

Thank you Jessica.

What Does This Have To Do With Marketing?

I have clients come to me time and time again looking for advice. I get contacted out of the blue by clients, some have gone months without reaching out to me and suddenly they want advice on a variety of topics – internet marketing, SEO, Social Media, Facebook, website design, landing pages, USP’s, the list goes on.

Why do they contact me?

Just like the garbage I had to deal with on my phone bill, there’s so much crap being thrown around out there about marketing. There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing.

YOU MUST KNOW THIS AND BEWARE

I’ve had clients Adwords accounts turned off because they were seduced, I’ve had clients waste THOUSANDS of dollars changing their site to appease someone jibber-jabbing about SEO (I’ve got a great story about a test we did where we got multiple listings on the first page of Google for a term that has over 4,100,000,000 – yes, you read that right, multiple first page listing out of OVER 4 BILLION SEARCHES!! – there were some radically strange things going on that we uncovered but I’ll save that story one for another day.)

I’ve had clients come to me that have wasted tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on “guru’s” and other consultants. And within the first few minutes we could identify the problem.

Bottom line: you must be able to decipher fact from fiction and the truth from fantasy and seduction. If you can’t you’re doomed and will waste money, and even worse, massive amounts of time.

With the exhaustive expansion of online media and ways of getting traffic, if you can’t decipher this on your own, then I suggest you have a trusted adviser you can turn to. The bible says there’s safety in a multitude of counselors. Whether you read the bible or not, this is good common sense. Who are your trusted advisers?

And with all the seduction and wolves in sheep’s clothing out there, sometimes messages like this get missed.

A problem I have is I don’t have a bright shiny object I pitch.

What I do have is:

• time tested and proven, yet cutting edge and radically different methods for increasing sales
• what’s working now
• and straight answers for today’s problems

I guess that’s why people keep coming back to me for advice and allow me to help.

In your business, your clients and prospects are getting pitched garbage and B.S. too. If you help them decipher what’s real and what’s fantasy, they will keep coming back and refer more business to you.

Blessings,

P.S. Amazing how a good rant can improve your mood!