October, 2005

Guaranteed Piece of…..   
By Larry Bailin, CEO Single Throw

Are you one of those people that will make a buying decision based on a guarantee? A lot of people base their purchases on this and as a result, many companies put more into their guarantees than the actual product or service itself! Interestingly, however, top quality products and services are rarely known for their guarantee. For example, Mercedes Benz does not offer a 100,000-mile warrantee like some other car manufacturers. Why? Because people that buy Mercedes know they are purchasing quality vehicles and the warrantee would do little to persuade them in that knowledge. 

I recently found my all-time favorite guarantee printed on the side of my friendly neighborhood garbage truck:  “Satisfaction Guaranteed or Double your Garbage Back”, perfect! Finally, a guarantee that puts things in perspective! Most guarantees (at least the ones that are Internet Marketing related) do indeed give you “double your garbage back” in the way of aggravation and extra work. Not only will it put you twice as far behind your competition, it will also double the amount of time required to get your project up and running properly. On the bright side, if you’re lucky, you may even get some of your misspent money back, but I “guarantee” it will take twice as long as it did for you to dole it out in the first place.

Services are the same as products when it comes to guarantees – the best services don’t need one. A guarantee is nothing more than an excuse to fail, providing a “safety net” for the service provider. The worst part is, that safety net usually ends up costing you far more than the security you gain by having it. The late Chris Farley said it best in his role as Tommy Callahan in the movie “Tommy Boy,” when he said, “What you really have there is a guaranteed piece of…. If you’d like me to take a dump in a box and mark it ‘guaranteed,’ I will, I’ve got spare time.”

The Internet Marketing industry is notorious for providing empty guarantees. As we all know, life and business really have no guarantees and that certainly applies to marketing of any kind. When it comes to marketing, we all realize there is risk. As business people dedicated to growing our businesses, we try to mitigate that risk with facts, reputation, track record and measurability, not empty promises. We are all inundated with SPAM email about “Guaranteed Placement in Google”, “Top Search Engine Rankings Guaranteed!” and more. But with few exceptions, the bottom line is, unless Google company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin personally offer you this guarantee of top positioning, these promises are more than likely an excuse to fail rather than a guarantee of success.

What do I mean by “Excuse to Fail?” That’s a great question (glad I asked it). Let’s examine a typical Internet Marketing guarantee. First and foremost, there is always a placement and/or positioning guarantee statement that will read something similar to, “Top ten placements – guaranteed or your money back”. This is your first major red flag (read above statement pertaining to Google founders). No one can guarantee placement—period! Even Google themselves warns about companies that guarantee placement. For more information on this, visit their “Fact and Fiction” page at http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Typically this type of money-back guarantee will cost you more in the long run. You may be asking, “What do I have to lose if I get my money back?” That’s another great question (glad you asked it). How about lost opportunity and time? Internet Marketing is a phenomenal and effective way to attract potential customers at their exact time of need; after all, you know they are searching for your product or services right now.  If the company you hire to implement your Internet Marketing initiatives fails; you have your “guarantee,” but what does it get you? You already missed opportunities to capture great potential customers who just ended up on your competitor’s doorstep.

Now what? Not only do you have to collect on your “guarantee” (good luck on that), now you have to start all over again, researching Internet Marketing Consultants, setting up meetings, reading proposals and providing support and information. How much time does that take and what does it cost you in money, manpower and lost opportunity?  Remember that little phrase, “double your garbage back?” Bingo! Time to do it all over again. But it’s okay…you’ve gotten your money back from the last company that failed, right? You know, that company that didn’t try all that hard to succeed on your behalf because you had approved the failure in advance with the understanding they would refund your money (eventually) and forget about you?

I’m going to say this once again; there are no guarantees in business. Choose a service based on a sterling reputation rather than a hollow guarantee. Research references and the track record of the company you are hiring and trusting to help you succeed. If you pass on a great company just so you can have your nice warm security blanket, shame on you. Great marketers do not have guarantees because, like Mercedes Benz, they don’t need them. Do you really want your money back or do you want the program to succeed? You need a company committed to your success long-term, not just committed to meeting some nonsensical guarantee or non-success oriented benchmark.

Since we mentioned benchmarks, lets talk about “performance based guarantees” for a moment. Performance based guarantees are given by companies that get paid when they deliver results. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, you know what they say about something sounding “too good to be true.” Let me tell you a quick story about a woman I interviewed that worked for one of these “Pay for Performance” companies. She recently found herself unemployed because the Internet Marketing Company she was employed by went out of business. She told me about their “Pay for Performance” model. “We only got paid when we achieved results for our clients. Most of our clients were not worth working on long term. If we couldn’t produce huge volume for them right away, we ignored their programs and focused on the clients that we could make good money on”.

That’s the mindset you’re dealing with right there! Pay for Performance companies chase the money – period! Can you blame them? That’s the trade off you allow by not taking any risk yourself. You can’t expect companies that are performance based or guarantee driven to treat your project as if they are accountable to you or care about you because they don’t! They are accountable to the guarantee only, and if they don’t meet the guarantee or benchmark it’s no big deal – they can always give you back your money…eventually.