ONLINE-ADS>> Preventing Marketing Mishaps

Greg Bulmash (greg_at_bulmash.com)
Wed, 24 Dec 1997 14:00:52 -0800

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When I mentioned in a recent letter having been spammed twice for
$25 business listings at the Internet Mining Company
(http://www.miningco.com), one of their guides who reads the list
responded to me with great concern. She's not management, so her
concern was about being affiliated with a spammer.

She requested copies of the spam and sent them off to her contact at
the Mining Co. He replied that it had been done by a consultant
without their prior knowledge and those activities had been terminated
as soon as they found out.

I thinks this is something that we all need to look at, not for the
purposes of condemning the Mining Co., but for protecting ourselves
against falling victim to the same debacle.

There are lots of people touting themselves as marketing/promotion
consultants, but unlike a doctor or lawyer, there's no state board or
governing body that licenses them or ensures they meet certain
standards of knowledge and skill. Anyone with an e-mail account and
a list of e-mail addresses to spam can hang up a shingle and call
themselves an internet marketing consultant.

It's sort of sad in a way. People often hire consultants because of
their own lack of knowledge about online promotion, but that same lack
of knowledge may mean they don't know the right questions to ask or
know if the consultant is talking out of his/her posterior when he says
that something is a good or bad idea. Heck, I think the Mining Co. may
have gotten into this trouble because, like those of us who are very
net-aware, they might have just taken for granted that a real
professional wouldn't do something like that. I haven't talked to them
to confirm it, but it seems a very valid assumption of what may have
happened.

Net novices might not know the questions to ask while net veterans may
take some of these issues for granted. You're as likely to shoot
yourself in the foot by knowing too much and thinking the consultant
knows/believes what you do just as much as you are by knowing too
little and thinking the consultant knows substantially more.

I think this just goes to show that whether you're a net veteran or net
novice, you still need to ask the same questions of your consultant,
particularly about their views on things that can damage your company
or reputation, such as spam.

-Greg

--

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|NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION #21:                                  |
|Rise up, touch the hand of God, and say "Tag! You're it!"   |
--------------------------------------------------------------
|Greg Bulmash               Author/Editor - The WASHED-UPdate|
|greg_at_bulmash.com               http://www.bulmash.com/washed|
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|This Week: FALCON CREST         Next Week: MORE FALCON CREST|


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