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January 05, 2006

Does your business look authentic?

I got a clever marketing approach by email. A vice president at a corporate finance company forwarded a message from one of his market analysts that read:

Bob,

One of our market analysts has brought to my attention that our firm could be a good partner for supporting your growth strategy. Are you available for a brief teleconference this week, or perhaps early next week would be better?

Best regards,

[name]
[signature block]
[forwarded message]
…

The email did not look like spam. The forwarded email from the Market Analyst asked the sender if he had heard back from us. All the details were consistent with what the email said, and full contact information was provided in both signatures -- the forwarded message and the one sent to me.

So I did the first thing I do when anybody I don’t recall sends a follow up email. I checked my email archive and googled the company name.

Six months before the VP had sent me an identically worded email forwarding a very similar email from the same market analyst. Smells like an automated pitch.

The company name, amazingly, brought up only two hits on Google. One was their corporate web site, which described lots of deals they had done but with no client names. Real estate, $2,000,000; Biotech Equity, $7,000,000; plastics ~ debt, $3,000,000. Really? How do I know?

The second was a social networking site where the purported Market Analyst revealed himself to be the company’s "database ubermeister" and an idiot. Okay, that's not fair. Let's say lovable goofball without the sense to keep his employer’s name off a site where he says "haha! I'm smarter than you!" and reveals that he is divorced, a Sagittarius, and looking to meet "somebody like me but with boobs...[cruder stuff, and] fewer tattoos than my mom".

In All Marketers Are Liars (I loved this book!) Seth Godin talks about "the power of telling authentic stories in a low-trust world". When your story is "we are a strong, professional financial partner who can help support your growth strategy" authenticity is important. This firm didn't provide details to back up their story. Worse, they let details that detracted from the story rise to the top of the list.

Do you look authentic on the web? What do you do when checking out a cold caller? Have you checked out your own business the way the next person to hear your marketing pitch will?

(Thanks to Business Pundit, whose post on spying on your employees through social networking sites brought this back to mind. For what it's worth, I think you should always know what hits your company name is bringing up. You can’t stop employees from having personal lives and web sites, but you can know and care if those sites reference your business or represent 50% of your corporate web presence.)

Posted by Bob Pritchett at January 5, 2006 06:08 AM

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