An Internet Marketing Consultant’s Experience with Service Magic
Hello TriMark blog readers, my name is Randy Goins. I’m the founder and President of TriMark Solutions and I believe this may very well be my first blog post. In order for me to write a blog, I have to feel very certain that what I have to say has validity and deserves recognition and is worthy of taking my time away from our clients and their initiatives. So, without further adieu, I’m going to get started and share an experience that I have recently had with an online lead generation company called Service Magic.
Briefly, to tell you a little about my background as an internet marketer, my career started right after the internet boom. I was a graduate from Appalachian State in Boone, NC and began in business as a sales rep for a small company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina selling yellow page advertising products. An opportunity came my way and I took that opportunity working for a company headquartered out of California that, in my later years, partnered with the company Service Magic. So my knowledge of the company has always been present. While I understand that Service Magic specializes in generating leads and providing leads to customers willing to pay for them, there are many questions that a company must ask themselves before diving in to a relationship with Service Magic or any other online lead generation firm.
The primary questions to ask are, “How marketing driven are the people that you’re working with?” , “What are their tactics and approaches and are they willing to share them with you?”, “How many people are they selling those leads to?”, and “What’s the approximate price per lead and how do they qualify their leads?” These are all valuable questions that you must as a business owner ask a company like Service Magic before entering an agreement with them.
One of TriMark’s clients is a national home remodeling company, a customer focused, family oriented, successful and rapidly growing company. Recently I performed a search, and found a new competitor targeting our client’s business name. Out of curiosity, I clicked onto the client ad, completed a form and sat back and waited.
Roughly 2 hours later, I received my first call, it was from Service Magic. Service Magic introduced themselves, discussed with me my inquiry, and began to ask me questions. I immediately told them that during my search, I was specifically looking for my particular client, and I was trying to go that site with the same purpose as a consumer would – of potentially completing an inquiry form. So, I was wrongfully directed by the placement of the ad by either Service Magic or that a Service Magic lead generation vendor had unethically set up. Now, there is a chance that this ad could have been placed without indecent intent, but the odds are slim that it was unintentional.
So back to my conversation with Service Magic. As we were discussing my needs, I explained to the Service Magic representative that my purpose was to locate my client, and that this submission should not be counted against any Service Magic paying lead-generation customers because I was not planning to purchase their products.
It took just an hour to receive that first Service Magic call. Over the last 2 days, I have received approximately 6 calls from Service Magic customers. I have explained to each of them that I specifically stated to Service Magic not to distribute my lead, that I was not a lead, that I was looking for a particular company and I had been redirected unwillingly to a site in which Service Magic either owns or invests in to drive leads to be sold to their customers.
Now to clarify, TriMark Solutions is a lead generation company as well, but there is one particular characteristic that we feel is of the upmost importance. It’s one word: Quality. The quality of the leads you drive is far greater in importance then the quantity. Quantity of leads is irrelevant, it’s the success of your customers. Most lead-generation firms have their eyes on the prize, which is revenue. While here at TriMark, our “eyes on the prize” is our clients’ quality of leads being generated. This defines our objectives, and we feel as though companies like Service Magic potentially portray TriMark and other local hardworking lead generation firms in a negative light.
You may pay $15, $20, $25, $30 per lead depending upon the size of your market, and the competition in which your lead generation firm is competing with. Obviously, these will both potentially cause the price to go up, but at the end of the day, you must still acknowledge that the majority of leads you will receive, you will not gain business for. If it was that simple everyone would be doing it, and Service Magic and other online lead generation companies would be charging much more for a lead than they are currently charging. Their goal is quantity, the more leads you can generate the more people you sell them to, the better. False principles like that are what can cause Service Magic to become a profitable operation.
To conclude, I’m very bothered by this information, which is why I took time out of my day on one of the busiest weeks of my company’s year to sit down and write this blog. I felt I needed to let each of you know to be very careful when investing your money online. Make sure the company that you work with has a plan and a strategy, and a solid team around them. And that they believe in quality, and they have a proven track record, and care about their customers. At the end of the day, their customer’s success equals their success – that’s the bottom line. That’s the way TriMark was built, that’s the way TriMark operates, that’s the way TriMark employees think. Not because it’s embedded into them, but because they are hired because of it.
Be very careful when investing your money. If you have any questions, or you would like to learn more about how TriMark may be able to potentially help you, feel free to visit our website TriMarkSolutions.com, fill out our contact form and someone will be in contact with you if we can help.
We generally will know if we can help within a matter of minutes. We’ll take a brief look at the backend of your website, to see what we’re working with. If it doesn’t compete with a customer that we already work with, we’ll give you a call, but if not, please utilize the information I’ve taken the time to put into this blog post however you see fit. I hope it helps, and in the future hopefully online lead generation companies are going to have to work harder to gain your business because you will know exactly what to look for.
Have a great day!
Randy Goins
