Sock Puppet Marketing? Don’t do it!

Article Published: Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 5:06 pm | Subscribe

Establishing a strong web presence is going to be an essential budget item for companies large and small all across America in 2010.  In order to compete in almost any market this coming year, company chair members are gathering with internet marketing guru’s to build a better understanding of how to be successful online and particularly within their target markets.

Over the past couple years as I’ve been building knowledge and methods for Internet Marketing myself. I’ve began combining my own technical know how and an almost inherit understanding of marketing with continual search engine architecture and social networking research. This has rendered some professional practices and methods for helping me build an initial platform for success online for these same types of companies.  At the same time, over the past couple years I’ve had the experience witnessing some of the most incredibly bad and potentially dangerous Internet Marketing practices, and I am troubled to inform you that your web development firm, consultants and Marketing “Guru’s” might be doing some of these same things but I’m a firm believer that often times knowing what not to do is more beneficial than knowing what to do.

The Internet Marketing industry is one that is highly littered with empty promise affiliate programs, MLM scams and pressure sales representatives, so it can be hard to not only find a firm/freelancer with a quality portfolio but also a firm/freelancer that you can truly trust with your project.  You’ve done a lot of research, you’ve had several meetings and you might have even brought another knowledgeable tech/marketing person with you to help you sift through the competitive world of Internet Marketing nonsense.  How can you truly know if you’ve put your signature on a contract that is ultimately going to be beneficial to establishing a web presence online, not only that but how do you know if the company you are working with isn’t practicing what has come to be known as “Sock Puppet Marketing”?  At this point if you aren’t already familiar with Sock Puppet Marketing you’re probably wondering what it is, or how to identify it.  As SEO (Search Engine Optimization), E-Mail marketing, and Organic Content Creation has become more competitive and difficult to dominate over the past couple years, marketing firms have been backed into corners when it comes to being successful deploying projects in these areas.

Google employs over 300 developers that are dedicated to constantly improving their PageRank© software, with as many developers that there are working on PageRank© there are thousands of developers and sly Internet Marketers attempting to trick and deceive Google in order to get higher Page Ranks and first page search results.  Sock Puppeting or “Astroturfing” was initially discovered by Google when Multi Level Marketers began creating fake online personalities and dialogs to help promote their products/services.  These “Marketers” would create and deploy blogs, landing pages and websites and allow for open dialogs via comment feeds, forums and social networking that consisted of these fake personalities.  Let’s say I was the inventor of “Lots-O-Pop” a soft flavor explosion bubble gum, as an effort to help promote my product I would deploy a website, create a handful of  fake personalities and build a dialog on my website that consisted of these fake personalities saying things like “Boy, Lots-O-Pop sure is the tastiest bubble gum I’ve every had!!”, this would be an example of “Sock Puppet Marketing”.  To put this really simply, if you’re trying to market a tangible product or a service, don’t try to push it!  If it isn’t something that is marketable throught traditional marketing strategies or current Internet Marketing trends and guidelines then you need to re-consider the product or service or seek help with marketing.  If you have to invent a brand image then clearly the brand isn’t marketable. I’ve also seen Marketers write fake testimonials for their products/services, incorporate the use of high profile trademarks to build trust by association (including an “as seen on tv” logo or “as seen on CNN”) though many times these are blatant lies or harsh misconceptions. The reason that these practices are not only clearly bad, but also risk the potential of being dangerous is because as Google discovers these dishonest marketing techniques they begin improving their PageRank© algorithms to combat them. As of right now the algorithms are so intelligent that they can crawl the content of a testimonial page and by looking at sentence structure, language and comma use they can equate if the testimonials have been written by the same person.

I’ve said this many times in previous articles and it’s something I can’t stress enough, clients you must look at your internet projects as an investment!  Many times I hear clients or prospects mention that other companies have quoted them hundreds less for the same project, but look at it like this, if you were getting a roof put on your house and a contractor quoted you a considerable amount less than other contractors, they are either cutting their costs buy cutting material quality or labor quality.  I started out this article touching on some key points that have ultimately helped me build a process for Internet Marketing success, and it comes down to three main points; Research, Knowledge and Articulately Educating the client.  Many Internet Marketers stumble because they just haven’t kept up on the tools/technologies that are essential to truly assisting a client reach their goals for leads and sales. They also fail at establishing and storing knowledge needed to educate the client on why it is important to implement these professional techniques. When this takes place the marketer begins to feel resistance from the client when it comes to closing a contract proposal, this will result in the marketer being forced into cutting their own costs which eliminates their profit margins.  When this happens,  Sock Puppet Marketing techniques take precedence in practice, thus resulting in loss of client retention, industry leadership and overall growth and revenue increase. In contrast, if the marketer maintains current knowledge of industry leading techniques and practices and can articulately educate the client on these things and even the dangers of Sock Puppet Marketing the client will have more trust in them and thus be more willing to approach their project as a long term investment and furthermore find the cash-flow needed to make a match.

To help my colleagues as well as prospected clients begin a path to 2010 Internet Marketing success here are a few bullet items to consider:

• Research - Check reputable sources like Google for SEO and Marketing trends that are current and cutting edge, take notes, set expectations.
• Ask Around - If you’re a client seeking a professional, legitimate web development, SEO or Marketing plan check out forums and blogs. Ask around as to what to look for when approaching a firm, what their experiences are, learn some of the industry language.  You can usually and relatively quickly decipher if the person you are speaking to is knowledgable on a given topic.
• Educate – For marketers, keep in mind that clients are coming to you because they desire a professional, one that can deliver on promises to help them reach their goals which are usually centered around increased revenue.  Be prepared to answer clients questions, but more importantly be prepared to articulately educate clients on the importance of legitimate marketing don’t back yourself into a corner to simply make a sale.

Article Posted Under: Articles, Featured, Home Page Post