tonydbaker.com

I was reading a post from a well-respected marketing person who serves the local area. The post was about how X company that provides local internet marketing is probably a scam because you do not need them and how they must be a scam in order to pay everybody involved.

I certainly don’t want to defend the company mentioned. However, I do have something to say about the network marketing sales model when it comes to creating a local search marketing solution for small businesses.

First, the company should be forthcoming about their methods. For some reason they seem ashamed of what they are doing. And maybe it’s because it’s Internet marketing and network marketing have both earned a bad reputation over the last few years.

They didn’t earn a bad reputation because Internet Marketing or Network Marketing are bad. They earned that reputation because they failed to live up to client expectations that they set.

As a company that directly competes with X company, I’ve have had the opportunity to listen to some of their calls and have had their people pitch me on their services. I’m glad that they’ve finally issued an order to stop saying things like “we have people that used to work with Google” and “we partner with Google to get better deals than you can get.” In all fairness, these types of statements and deceptive hype creeps into any sales channel that doesn’t properly train their sales people.

There was another company that recently sold off that was quite similar. Again, it wasn’t because what they were selling or the model of selling it was wrong. It was because they failed to set and keep up with expectations. Instead of focusing on providing a great service at a great price in a manner that would duplicate itself, they seemed to be focused solely on recruiting. They quickly made some bad assumptions when it comes to Internet marketing and went belly up.

Then X company sprung out of that. Why because they recognized that it was the leadership that was the problem and not the opportunity or the model. This company too will fail unless they realize that they are service providers and consultants rather than a get rich quick scheme.

I don’t believe that this model is a rip off, a scam, or anything of the sort. The fact of the matter is that there isn’t anything that anybody can do on the Internet that anybody else can’t eventually do themselves with the proper amount of ongoing training, desire, and flat out testing over and over and over again. The experiences that a person has and the amount of information they are able to consume and process is often the only difference between one internet marketer and another.

Second, you are right in that most businesses would be better served by hiring an experienced full-time marketing person or even a dedicated consultant. One that would coordinate with a web design firm, a writer, an adwords expert, a local search expert, a social media expert in order to build a wordpress website, add content regularly, promote the site in adwords, participate in social media discussions, blogs, tweets, and facebook pages on a daily basis, manage all of the local search services, respond to reviews, seek out new local link opportunities, write articles for distribution, write and submit regular press releases, seek out directory listings and create, follow through, track and constantly re-evaluate and re-create a link building campaign according to analytics, social buzz and other ongoing changes within the business.

All of this of course while spending 10 to 20 hours a week keeping up on seo and social media techniques, keyword strategies, graphic and flash banner strategies, seo buzz about new products and services, and so much more. For most businesses this still would be inadequate. You would likely have to go through 3 or 4 marketing people on staff, go through a variety of other experts, and constantly be re-evaluating performance.

I know this because I’ve had 15 years in the Internet Marketing business providing creative and marketing services to at least a thousand different companies. Many companies did well with it. They had a liaison that could serve their interest and could actually make marketing decisions. They had established goals and specific requirements that they wanted to achieve.

Other companies had so much red tape that any little change took several weeks to get a reply for. Either because they had a committee approach with no set decision maker or the decision maker was so far up in the company that a decision was never made.

Ultimately, my point is, you can always do more and always do better in marketing, but even with a great marketing company to assist you, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to achieve success.

But for now let’s look at say a local dentist. The dentist has a small office with a staff of 3 to 5 people. At most, the dentist works Monday through Friday from 9 to 6 and is on call for weekend emergencies.

In the mind of the dentist, the dentist is a dentist first and business owner second. The books are outsourced to a cpa. The office cleaning is done by a cleaning company. The advertising and everything else you can imagine is probably dumped onto the back of an office manager that spends their day coordinating staff, handling complaints, setting appointments, making reminder calls, and sending out basic billing.

Back when it was as easy as running a phone book ad, all the Dentist did was look at what his competition was doing, change out the logo and phone number and hopefully add something that made him different.

Today that media is dead. And yet… do you think this Dentist is going to hire a full time marketing person at $36k (or more) plus taxes and benefits, and then hire an outside marketing firm, web designer, and do everything that he or she should (or could) do in order to properly invest in internet and interactive marketing?

Does he have time? No. Does he have the knowledge? No. Has he been hit on by hundreds of Internet marketing “experts” calling, emailing, and otherwise pitching him with their “magic blue pill” for the last 15 years? Yes. Does he trust them? No.

Now if a dentists isn’t going to do this. Then why would the locally owned restaurant, oil change station, dent repair service, auto dealer or attorney hire an expensive Internet marketing expert? Obviously people are looking on their iphones, search engines and web devices for these businesses. So what’s the answer?

And let’s look at your comments. The solution you mentioned might be good for a “Small business that have no desire for long term internet business growth.”

You’re right. This hypothetical dentist has no desire for long term internet business growth. His desire is for new customers to constantly be pouring into his front door. He doesn’t really care how or why that happens. He cares about building his practice and focusing on his retirement.

Your second remark states that it might be good if for “Business that are looking for a short term band-aide to make up for their poor website design and lack of knowledge about adwords and other online marketing systems.”

Ditto to the above. The reason why less than half of businesses still don’t have a website after 15 years of me and everybody else telling them that they need one is that… they really don’t care about the website. They care about the end result. To date every little blue pill they’ve taken has been inadequate to say the least.

Likewise, of the 50% that do have websites, they are stale out-dated electronic brochures built with whatever webmaster fad of the month design tool was popular at the moment, whether it be javascript marquees, flash, ajax or whatever.

The vast majority of these companies rarely, if ever, actively promote their web address on anything other than their print materials or tag it to the end of their tv, radio or print advertisements, etc. Then they wonder why “the Internet doesn’t work” for them.

Now lets look at the traditional model. In a typical marketing agency, you’re going to have a small handful of salespeople, a sales manager, an operations director, and of course the owner. Sometimes the owner of this marketing agency is the sales manager, project manager, marketing director and operations director. But let’s assume that this business does more than $25k a month in sales and must have a staff to sell, fulfill, process payroll, pay taxes, pay overhead, etc.

For each new client, it’s very likely that at least 25% of a job will go to the salesperson. This means that the hourly rate, salary, or whatever guaranteed minimum that most salespeople rely on to get started is included in that plus a 10 to 15% commission as incentive. Then you have bonuses, taxes, benefits, sick days, computer expenses, customer management software, staff meetings, birthdays, related downtime, etc… to factor in.

When all is said in done, it’s easy to come up with 25%, if not 35% to 50% or more of your sales going to a good sales person. If the salesperson could duplicate more, then your profit margin of course would go up. But there’s only so much that your creative staff can handle, only so many articles, press releases and submissions, directory submissions, etc that your staff can handle. Eventually you add more staff, then add more salespeople, then add more staff. Eventually your overhead is a nightmare.

Plus, it typically takes 8 to 10 salespeople to find one decent one. That means that you’ve hired, trained, and wasted thousands of dollars in payroll, time, and frustration to find someone that can help you grow your business. Keep in mind that other than the rare person you meet who you convinced to join your team… most salespeople responding to ads would still be selling whatever they were selling if they were any good at it. Other good salespeople would be entrepreneurs or executives, as most top business executives come out of sales.

You basically have to find a diamond in the rough to get someone who’s trainable and can learn about this unique platform. Don’t get me wrong, there are tens of thousands of people who qualify for this, but it’s not their primary income, desire, or maybe you just haven’t found them yet. Yes, it’s worth the search to find one star salesperson. But it cost money. And once they realize they’re your star, it’s going to cost you more and more and more as they constantly demand more money per sale in perks, commissions, and benefits.

Needless to say, it’s EASY to spend 40 to 60% on building and maintaining a sales staff. The only way to really make any substantial money in this competitive environment is to scale, and I mean scale up dramatically.

You need a dozen salespeople, or even hundreds to really make this worth while and see any profit in it. Henry Ford isn’t famous because he invented a car. He’s famous for inventing a way to re-create that car thousands of times over, year after year, decade after decade.

The boutique marketing agency needs to specialize in a particular niche or they will likely never make a true corporate profit. The marketing entrepreneur at this point is simply earning a paycheck and creating paychecks for his staff.

Yes, it’s possible as a boutique marketing agency with a staff of 10 to 20 people to create a good deal of money. Possibly even a million dollars or two a year. But for how long will this go on? Most agencies that hit this prosperity only last a few years. Their star salespeople burn out or move on, their management dissolves, their goals change, etc.

If you looked at the failure rate of these companies and the thousands of applicants that were hired and trained that never made any real money at it… you’d think that you were talking about a typical network marketing company! Like network marketing, in many cases it’s not the company that failed, but rather its people simply quit, or didn’t truly try in the first place.

To become financially stable or even wealthy, you must do something that can replicate itself. You must do something that can be duplicated. The reason why so many people sell music, books, etc… is because that book can be duplicated 10,000 times over the next 30 years and every time that happens they make money. If you write 30 good books over 30 years, then every time they sell, you make more money, and every sale can lead to more sales of other books you’ve written. This is just one of many possible examples.

Look at people who are financially stable and financially wealthy. In most instances, they’ve done something to duplicate themselves. Even a football star is replicated when the camera that has him on film is distributed to a million viewers live, recorded, and on dvd. He’s not getting paid to throw a ball. He’s getting paid to throw a ball in front of a million viewers!

As a business owner hopefully you are replicating yourself. You hire a sales manager that would manage a staff that can create sales. You hire salespeople that represent you. In a way that’s replicating.

But.. in this instance, the salespeople can become wealthy in one of two ways… they either replicate you so often that they build a nest egg, or they become you. In as such, the sales manager retires, you retire, or they become your competition, etc. Eventually they want to grow beyond the daily sales cycle and start their own company where they replicate themselves, and thus they too can become wealthy, or at least financially stable.

It doesn’t matter if you’re making $10 an hour or $500 an hour. If you can’t replicate yourself, you’re still working by the hour. I’ve heard several professionals lament about this. They can make $250 an hour as a Chiropractor, but their time is still for sale, and ultimately the amount they can make is capped.

In order to make $200,000 a year, which is a comfortable living in most states, you have to make $100 an hour, for every available working hour. If your time is worth $100 an hour, then the 5 hours you just spent marketing yourself on facebook, twitter and your blog this week was a $500 expense. This comes out of that 100% too… so by the time you deduct salespeople, bonuses, overhead, tracking, training and fulfillment, you have very little left.

Unless you are going to pull from your family time, leisure time, self-fulfillment time, and personal growth time, then like most people you are limited to the amount of work hours you have available in a day.

For most people today, the only way that they’ll ever make $50 an hour or $100 an hour, or even $500 an hour is to replicate themselves. That means that they either create something that replicates itself. Or they go out and recruit and train people personally who help them build their business. Those people in turn recruit and train more people who have the same opportunity.

For it to have any traction, whatever they’re doing for their business must have a constant, steady and growing demand. You don’t have this with most self-consumption programs that force you to drink, swallow, or otherwise consume over-priced junk. It’s easy to eat your profits in network marketing just as it is in any other business.

However you do have this with a capitalistic society that requires that the vast majority of small businesses are constantly recruiting, refining, and building their businesses. These companies always have and always will need some form of advertising and marketing.

At BizNdex we know that we can’t be the perfect marketing guy on payroll for each and every business that needs our service. We know that we can’t be the custom web developer that builds a pretty website that constantly needs updating. We know what we can’t be the perfect and ultimate marketing solution.

We do know that we’ve created a formula that is replicable. We have created a system where the average local business can have their vital information available on the web (which is what they really wanted in the first place) and it will attract leads and buyers (which is what they wanted in the first place) and this can be done for virtually any business in any geo-targeted area just about anywhere.

We’ve enhanced it by creating a search engine friendly system that encourages ongoing consumer-driven content creation (which is what search engines really want) and a system that provides consumers with the type of interaction, coupons, videos and so much more that they crave.

Likewise we’ve created a system where the average Joe can easily tell Jane about a simple concept. This average Joe doesn’t need 10 to 20 hours a week in SEO training. He simply needs an understanding of the business and why it works. Jane doesn’t need 15 years of marketing experience, she just needs to know what Joe knows, and Jane can replicate his efforts.

Since the system is based on concepts that are easily understood, along with videos, webinars, and emails that are easily understood. Joe and Jane can tell business owners that they already do business with on how they can get found in Google, Google Local, Google Ads, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and all of those places that people are looking for locally available products, services and brands.

These local business owners aren’t going to trust the average Internet Marketing email, phone call, or advertisement that they see. But they will trust and try out Joe or Jane simply because they’ve been doing business with them for years, they live in their community, go to their church, know their kids, etc.

Network marketing would seem to be the perfect fit for local internet marketing. No, it doesn’t do everything. But it can do enough to get them found in the major search engines. And, it can do so at a price that is affordable, and be profitable for everybody involved.

I don’t like the way that X and Y company do business. But, at BizNdex we are regular people just like you who have always loved and yet hated network marketing. We picked out what we loved, and we’ve dumped what we’ve hated.

BizNdex is a profitable opportunity but it’s not a get rich quick scheme. BizNdex doesn’t offer $1000 in services you may never use when you pay a huge signup fee. BizNdex provides a fair service for a fair price. BizNDex encourages recruitment through sales bonuses rather than encouraging recruitment off of signup fees. BizNdex is the opportunity I would join if I had a hand in building it myself. Oh wait… that’s exactly what happened!

Tony Darrick Baker
Vice President of Marketing
BizNdex LLC