Judy Kirkland, Echo Point Marketing Partners

As co-founder of EchoPoint Marketing Partners, Judy Kirkland creates systems and toolkits that empower businesses to make marketing far simpler and far more successful.  Drawing on an award-winning track record in B2B, B2C and B2G markets, Judy teaches clients how to develop an “echo point”  — their own unique value proposition and brand — to determine what to spend, what to say and what biggest-bang tactics to use in online, print, broadcast and face-to-face marketing.

Before co-founding EchoPoint Marketing Partners, Judy enjoyed more than twenty years of success as a nationally known marketing consultant and copywriter for clients ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. In addition to her YodelPoint.com blog, she is a regular contributor to newsletters and ezines in the fields of franchise marketing, custom media, search marketing, and how to market small businesses and professional services firms.

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A friend of mine markets nutritional supplements on the Internet. He’s a genius at using keywords, landing pages, blogs, review sites and other visibility tactics.  Even amid the crush of products in hot areas like “resveratrol,” his product names always appear at the top of search rankings.   

But the other day, I wanted to go to his corporate site, not to the different landing pages for his products.  I wasn’t sure of the exact URL so I entered his company name and was astounded at the link that came up. It was a complaint posted at the website of a state consumer affairs agency.  The company name appeared so often in the complaint no wonder it topped the search rankings. 

What was unsettling was the issue cited in the complaint: “The company offers a trial of its supplements but then requires you to cancel. If you don’t cancel, your credit card is charged.”  Well yeah! What marketer hasn’t used that offer? 

The “complaint” was so odd that I wondered if it was phony and had been posted by a competitor.  I searched the name of another company in the same market space.  Unbelievably, the exact same complaint came up for that company — and I mean the same, right down to wording, typos, and punctuation. I searched a third company (the third major player in the market space) and no complaint came up.  But when I did a little prowling around that company’s site, I discovered that they used the same cancel-or-get-charged offer as the other two competitors.  Hmmm.

Now I don’t want to point any fingers, and I know that nutritional supplements are the Wild West of Internet Marketing. But this so-called complaint should concern every marketer.  Here’s why: The complaint was POSTED, not filed. That means that there’s nothing official about it. But a customer may never drill down enough to discover that. Instead, they simply perceive that a complaint was “filed” about the company with an official state agency.  Yikes!  Think about the implications of phony postings all over today’s Web 2.0 world.

When I write about marketing challenges, I usually try to offer solutions.  But other than actively Googling yourself, I’m not sure what to do about phony complaints or phony reviews and ratings posted by competitors.  If you’ve got any suggestions, I’d love to hear them!