Let me paint a scenario for you that happens way too often, with out the owner even knowing what’s happening….
So you get a call from one of your long time clients who tells you that you have a new phone number… What?! They tell you that on one of your listing..maybe Yelp or anyone of the Yellow Page companies, that your number shows differently. Oh and by the way, so is your web address…. What gives??? You gave…gave up control of what gets published when you signed up with some of these marketing companies. Their main focus is to show you how valuable they are to your business and to make themselves more money… not bad reasons to focus on, but not done with truthful intent… in our opinion.
Here is what happened. You wanted them to track your results so you could better judge your ROI. They agree, you agree…. no problem here. But you sign over control of what gets put on the web. This is usually done through some listing management company, like Yext. (we are only using Yext as an example, we are neither for, or against Yext) These marketing companies like using Yext cause they can go in and change name, address, phone number, and url…. and they change it to the one they are tracking for you. So you say…whats wrong with that??? Here is the rub, they agree to give you so many “actions” to your business for X amount of dollars per month. Now, you are thinking about Google Adwords possibly, or a Pay Per Click program (PPC), and that could be part of it…. but you are now being charged (an action or real dollars) for any click to your website, or call from that tracking number. ANY click, or call….. even from free listing sites like Yelp. See they might google your business name directly, and click or call the phone number that is showing with out even knowing it’s not your true one.
True story: We had a client that was contacted via the phone, asked if they wanted to be on the first page of Google. (who hasn’t received those calls?) They signed up… what they did not know was they released their listing info to this company and they changed Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others without telling the owner. The owner decided to stop the service… no problem till they found out their Google+ page was wrong, along with the others… now what business owner is going to take the time to scour the internet to find all these wrong listings? How much business did they loose do to a disconnected phone number and wrong url?
Know What You’re Signing: Make sure to ask if this is the only place this number or url will appear…. get it in writing. And if you have any questions, type in the tracking number into Google, every so often… and see what shows up. You might be amazed. The good news is, they can remove the tracking phone number and url from those listing real quick… it’s just an over lay. (Another topic for another blog.. be careful what business you use to correct your listings. Not all companies are the same)
We hope this will help you to better understand, and if you have any questions, please contact us.
We are in the web design and SEO business to build relationships… one client at a time.
Ubiquitous Concepts
www.uconcepts.net
