Internet Marketing Fails and How to Avoid Them

Many companies avoid Internet marketing becaus

e of the horror stories they’ve heard: customers posting hundreds of negative comments on Facebook pages, rogue employees taking over twitter accounts, and ex-employees blogging lies about the company.

We’ll level with you: these are all definite risks. But the rewards far outweigh the risks. In fact, many of these risks are possible without you even becoming involved in Internet marketing (for instance: an ex-employee can start blogging about you even if you aren’t online).

Luckily, we can learn from the mistakes many other companies have made online. Here are three marketing “fails” we’ve seen and what you can learn from them.

1. L’Oreal’s Fake Blog

A few years ago, when blogging was still relatively new, many consumers started blogs about the companies they loved. One of these blogs was for L’Oreal, and it extolled what consumers loved about the company. The problem was that it was not a customer blog: it was created by L’Oreal. As soon as consumers discovered this, L’Oreal faced a huge backlash from their customers.

The Lesson: Everything you do online should be genuine and real, or customers will call you on it.

2. Personal Tweets on the Company’s Account

There are so many social networks available today that it is difficult to manage all of your company’s social media accounts. And let’s be honest: you probably have a couple personal social media accounts you update as well. It can be difficult to keep track of all your accounts…and sometimes you may even mix them up. That’s what happened when a Red Cross social media intern posted the following message to the Red Cross twitter account:

“Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer…. when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzerd” [Source]

The Lesson: Before posting anything to a social media account reread what you are posting and make sure it’s going to the correct account.

3. Domino’s Employees Post Disgusting Video

Two Domino’s employees decided to do something that would make any restaurant eater cringe: they posted a video to YouTube showing them doing disgusting things to the food they were preparing for actual customers. As would be expected, the video went viral and customers were up in arms. Many companies would have handled this situation by either keeping quiet and hoping the situation would go away, or finding someone to blame. Domino’s President Patrick Doyle however released his own video on YouTube taking full responsibility for the issue. With this move, Domino’s avoided an issue that could have significantly hurt the company.

The Lesson: If you do experience an Internet marketing blunder, accept full responsibility.

If you’d like to read about more Internet marketing “fails” and what you can learn, take a look at this article. If you are interested in how we can help with your Internet Marketing, be sure to contact us.

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