There was a guy named Ralph, now me and him had spoken for probably two years on and off about the fencing company he ran. Now I’ll be honest when I first spoke to Ralph it was to sell him on my SEO services; however, at the time he was interested but things just weren’t aligning timing-wise as he was struggling with a variety of different problems such as budgeting, staffing, and other growth related issues. Did I want to make a sale? Yeah, probably but I’ll be honest I’m not a very sales heavy person so I just told him “Look man no problem, if you’re not ready now that’s fine I’m always here to help if you have any questions” and boom that was my first interactions with Ralph.
Why does any of this matter you may ask? Well unlike many others, Ralph is someone who actually took me up on that offer and every now and then would check in with me to see if I could help him understand something about SEO, website design, or just ask me my thoughts on marketing related topics. One day he decides to come clean to me and told me he’s been working with an SEO agency who offered him a really solid deal and things were going well but lately he’s had his suspicions and wanted to see if I could audit his site for him. So I agree and I begin to run through the site. Almost immediately I notice some red flags, these were simple things like a lack of keyword volume, title tags weren’t not being optimized, heading tag structures out of whack, and the list goes on. So I finish my video audit and I send it over to him which he replies thank you to.
No more than 2 days later I receive an email from a random marketing agency asking if I’m such and such person. I guess they found me through the audit since I said “Hey Ralph it’s (insert name)” To which I reply yes, and almost immediately the guy starts going off saying things like “How can I lie in my report” and “Who do you think you are trying to steal my client”. I was confused because I honestly had no intention of signing him as a client after the audit and I tried to clear things up with him explaining my situation on how he came to me, but he essentially just said I should be ashamed of myself for trying to ruin it for other small business owners especially since I’m a one man agency. I felt bad and stopped responding, but then another side of me said F that guy he should be doing his job right the first time. Was I wrong here?
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My man…cmon read through this and then as a business owner reflect on how you’ve been taken advantage of, its one thing to offer some advise, lots of us do, its another thing to perform actual work. I always tell my family, friends, acquaintances I am happy to lend an ear and some knowledge but as soon as they ask me to do something actionable (aka an audit) then they best bring out the checkbook. It looks like your only reflecting upon half of the problem here. Additionally, if someone was to come to me as often as Ralph seems to have, I would write up a small consulting contract…but to each their own.
F that guy and F Ralph.
The guy seems weird for calling you out for exposing him being bad at his service. But also seems weird Ralph is just hiring someone else to do what you offer and still talking so much about seo related things for free with you.
It’s so easy in our game to find fault with someone else. If you sent that to one of my clients I’d have told them “of course there’s fault to find. They want the business”
no marketing is perfect. I saw a great sarcastic post on LinkedIn saying Coca Cola should have better CTA on their ads.
I don’t think you’re wrong, just a shitty tactic. When asked about my competitors I always ask “are you getting the results they promised?”
If the answer is no, I ask “ have they given you a solution to fix that?”
If that is no, then I start taking a look. But I always point out what I think is good.
Many businesses will make us push each other in a race to the bottom. I’m not into undercutting prices.
Some of us are better at this than others. If I trust myself to do better than any of you, then I am going to try charge more to give the impression that I offer more value.
The barriers to entry into our game is so low, there are far too many bullshitters so that those of us who are competent, (I feel) should rather not tear each other down like the hacks do.
To be honest all of you sound like you don’t know reasonable behaviour. Of course other agency shouldn’t call to moan at you, of course you can find fault do you know what they e been asked to do for how much? Of course the client is a free loader who maybe hands out your details to random strangers.
Could be a made up story to get people to DM him for SEO services.
Idk if this a good way to drive up clients 😭
Yeah, I always find it funny how many posts here are about something SEO related. Judging by this subreddit, you’d think half of all small businesses are selling SEO services.
How on earth did you not leverage the information you gained to have him be your client. You just gave him the info? Did he pay you for the audit?
Don’t screw with another man’s livlihood.
NTA
They were playing the sympathy card and trying to make you feel bad for doing business? Amateurs.
Business is a full contact activity and if they think they should be held to a different standard because they are small, then they shouldn’t be in business. Don’t feel bad, take their client (that’s called competiting not stealing, they don’t own the client) and encourage them to go take a few classes at their local community college in business management and SEO. It sounds like maybe they need to work on their skills. Good luck.
He’s not a client, he’s not paying you, stop wasting your time and move on…
You did nothing wrong. An SEO audit is exactly that. If doofus didn’t want to be caught with his pants down, he should have done properly the job he was paid for.
Now Ralph? That’s a whole different beast. Why are you giving away free advice, and, worse, a free SEO audit? All that’s done is given good ol’ Ralph something to hold over his PAID, cheap SEO agency.
Cut Ralph off. He’s not only a free loader, he doesn’t even have the basic decency to elide the details (or he’s clueless enough about how to do that) when he’s taking the paid SEO agency to task.
You’re better off spending time with business owners who value what you offer.
It sounds like Ralph and this SEO company are a match made in heaven. While you kind of walked into this by offering free help anytime, he likely had no intention of ever doing business with you. What is crazy is he would rather save a couple of dollars and actively manage his vendor than just get a vendor who can do everything for him so he can work on his business.
I’ve met a lot of Ralphs in my career and it’s just not worth it.
Block that guy and even Ralph. Move on. Second guessing business decisions you already made can eat a lot of valuable time. I’ve been in situations where I look back and said “man I could have done that a little different”, but it’s just not worth the focus. Honestly, it doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.
I don’t even know where to start
Nope. You good. You should never lose a second’s worth of sleep over how lazy other people are. You have no obligation to maintain somebody else’s clients. How somebody else runs their business or fails to run their business has nothing to do with you. You’re good.
Why are you wasting your time with this at all? Who cares if either person is reasonable. Nothing here is an asset to your business.