How NOT to Land an Offline Client

My family owns one of those "offline" businesses that so many Internet marketers are so eager to help out.

So, today I received an eMail message, which basically said something like this:

Okay, at this point, if they had bothered to look at our website, they would know the owner's name. It's even on the front page, above the fold, so you don't have to click additional links to find it.

And then what follows is a pitch explaining how we don't rank highly compared with our competitors and how they can help us improve our online visibility in local search and all that jazz.

But, here's the thing. The city is not the city we are in. Now, that's not necessarily a stopping point because it is the name of a city not terribly far away. Not a big market but, sure, it might not hurt to have more visibility there.

But, the address is not ours. In fact, the address and city they are referring to is in a state on the other side of the country from us.

Which, I suspect, explains why our website doesn't rank terribly high in the local search results there.

Of course, if they had bothered to look at our website, they would have seen our address, city and state right on the front page.

Also, they had our phone number wrong. They had the phone number of a similarly named company in that other state (which is probably the one they meant to contact). Our phone number is prominently positioned on our website.

So, it becomes very clear that they didn't even bother to look at our website. And, since they claim to be a "research center analyzing online visibility for small
and medium-sized businesses," I am left utterly unimpressed by the quality of their research thus far.

Thus, in the trash goes their eMail.

So, be careful if you are using automated methods to collect and send messages in an effort to reach offline prospects. We get a number of messages like this and all they provide us is a source of entertainment.