Internet Marketing Strategy and Your Reputation

The Internet is proving to be a frontier that not only beckons us, but forces us to move into it. Even small businesses need a strong, straightforward Internet marketing strategy to protect their identity, their brand, and their reputation. Even if you don’t plan to use any Internet marketing or Internet marketing strategy, you still need an online presence. Let me use a small example to illustrate my point.

Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood Indiana

I don’t often frequent Ruby Tuesday restaurants, but I recently found myself in Greenwood, Indiana and I saw a commercial advertising their Rubi Minis and I just had to have an order. So I get on the Internet and go to Google and type in “Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood Indiana” for my search string and guess what comes back? The first listing after the standard local business results is a complaint about Jess, a bartender at Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood, published by Rip-off Report. Of course, I know that Rip-off Report, Complaints Board, Complaints.com, Squeaky Wheel, and the other complaints sites are nothing but extortion operations aimed at getting companies to pay for “reputation management,” but the manager at the Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood must be having a horrid time explaining the complaints patrons find when searching for his or her restaurant.

This is just a small example of how a total dunderhead of a customer can royally mess up your business. And if one complaint on one of these sites becomes two, it has the chance to grow uncontrolled. Complaints sites are incredibly notorious for getting people riled up, often with little factual evidence to back up claims of rip-off, fraud, abuse, scam, and so on. The biggest issue with these sites is that complaints breed complaints and people begin flaming businesses they have no real experience with just for the fun of it. Soon you have an out of control snowball headed for lyrics in a country and western song. And if a complaint site registers at the top of a search engine results page (that’s SERP in the industry lingo) before your main website does, it becomes incredibly difficult to dislodge that complaint site.

Combating Idiots on the Internet

If all goes as planned, this page will actually appear before the Rip-off Reports page complaining about Jess when you search for Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood Indiana. At worst, this page will appear one or two listings down, but still on the first page in Google, if not in Yahoo and Bing. As you can see, it is not impossible to reclaim your reputation on the Internet, but it sure is a lot easier to defend a fortified position than to have to go on the offensive just to push down idiotic negative comments.

Do You Have an Internet Marketing Strategy?

We’d be glad to talk to you today about an Internet marketing strategy that can help you protect yourself and your business before detractors have the chance to force you into a compromising position. As with anything else in the world, you are far better off to plan ahead and develop a strong Internet strategy before you think you need it. The detractors do this for fun. Are negative comments something you can afford to see about you and your company in an Internet search? Most people understand the power of the Internet. Understand that engaging us to develop your Internet strategy before you have negative comments is going to be a whole lot cheaper. The longer you wait, the more you can expect to pay to get positioning on the Internet.

A Note to Less and the Manager at Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood

My apologies to Less on behalf of the dunderhead who complained about you. I’m sure you are a charming bartender and you’re probably faultless in this matter. I never did get to that Ruby Tuesday, by the way. I got distracted by wanting to write this page and ordered room service instead. The burger wasn’t a Ruby Mini by any stretch of the imagination, but it did the job. And if you are the manager at the Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood… you’re welcome. No charge. This time.

And if you still haven’t gone to Google to search for Ruby Tuesday in Greenwood, shame on you. Are you dense?